Police in Bihar recovered an AK-47 assault rifle, some cartridges and bombs from the ancestral house of independent MLA Anant Singh, who represents Mokama, at Ladma in Barh of Patna district. Mr. Singh, however, said the recovered weapon had been planted by the police as he had not visited his ancestral home for the last 14-years.

“On a specific input, police conducted raid at the residence of legislator Anant Singh,” Patna’s Superintendent of Police (Rural) Kantesh Kumar Mishra who led the raid, told local journalists in Ladma. “An AK-47 rifle and some cartridges have been recovered and the police operation is still going on,” he added.

The rifle was found wrapped in sheets of carbon paper to avoid detection by the metal detectors, added Mr. Mishra. “Even X-ray machines cannot detect the carbon covered weapons,” he said, adding that, a team of FSL-cum-bomb disposal experts was summoned from Patna to take details of the recovery and defuse some of the bombs that were recovered.

Popularly known as “Chhote Sarkar (mini government)” in his area of influence, Mr. Singh had got his wife Nilam Devi to contest this year’s Lok Sabha elections from Munger as a Congress candidate against the JD(U) leader Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh.

In a bitter contest, the JD(U) candidate had defeated Ms. Devi by more than 1.5 lakh votes. “Lalan Singh had nursed a grudge against me,” asserted the MLA, who claimed the JD(U) leader had begun harassing him through the local police. “The local senior police official is daughter of a senior JD(U) leader who is close to chief minister Nitish Kumar, and through her Lalan Singh has been harassing me to implicate me in false cases like this,” Mr. Singh told journalists in Patna. A gangster -turned-politician, Mr. Singh was earlier in the JD(U) and once considered close to top party leaders.

The MLA has in recent times also been summoned by the Patna police to collect his voice sample in connection with a viral video in which he is allegedly being heard speaking to some contract killers. “The Patna police had not summoned me… I had gone to them on my own after reading it in newspapers,” asserted Mr. Singh, who also claimed that he had survived recent attempts on his life.

Meanwhile, senior Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh came out in support of Mr. Singh and asserted, “It happens at both Centre and the State… if anyone speaks against those in power, he would be sent to jail or be chased by police, IT, ED and CBI.” Another RJD leader wondered why no action was taken “when Anant Singh was in the JD(U)...why now?... everyone knows why he is being harassed and by whom.”

However, leaders of the ruling JD(U) and BJP coalition rubbished claims of any political motive and said, “everybody knows Anant Singh’s character in the State…the police acts on specific inputs and information.”