Bihar’s Madhubani police on Sunday claimed to have arrested six people, including one woman, who were involved in the kidnapping and murder of RTI activist and citizen journalist, 22-year-old Avinash Jha, whose half burnt body was discovered on the evening of 12 November from Benipatti, Madhubani, almost 72 hours after he went missing. Jha’s half-burnt body, packed in a jute sack, was found under a peepal (sacred fig) tree in Uren village near Benipatti-Basaith highway number 52, less than 5 km from his home.
Jha, who was also known as Buddinath Jha, was an activist from Benipatti town and was well known for using RTIs to reveal irregularities involved in giving licences to private medical clinics and hospitals in the town, most of which employed “fake” doctors and attendants who had no medical training or experience.
As per the police statement, those who have been arrested include-Roshan Kumar (23), Bittu Kumar (20), Deepak Kumar (24), Pawan Kumar (22), Manish Kumar (21) and Purnakala Devi (24), all residents of Benipatti. As per police, Avinash was kidnapped by these six individuals on the night of 9 November, at 10.15 PM, 15 minutes after he was last seen on a local CCTV footage.
The police statement mentions no motive for this heinous crime. Earlier, local police sources had told the regional reporters that Jha was killed due to a “love affair”, without sharing any proof to substantiate their claim. However, this claim was vehemently denied by relatives and friends of Jha who spoke to The Daily Guardian.
Jha’s name has now been added to the list of at least 20 RTI activists who have been killed in the state in the last 10 years, raising serious questions on the “good governance” claim made by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
According to one of Avinash’s close associates, Mantu, due to his RTI based stories, which Avinash used to share on local news portals and on Facebook, at least four fake clinics were forced to shut down in the recent past and several such clinics had to pay a fine of Rs 50,000.
In a Facebook post on 7 November, Jha had announced that he had collected details of 10 more such clinics and hospitals which he was going to make public on 15 November. However, he was murdered before that.
The Daily Guardian has accessed government documents showing how 19 clinics in the area were ordered to be shut down in February 2021 for functioning illegally. The newspaper has also accessed multiple correspondences that Jha shared with government officials identifying such fake nursing homes in Benipatti.
Another close associate of Jha, Bideshwar Nath Jha, who runs a popular YouTube news channel, BNN news, told The Daily Guardian, that three of the six arrested by the police were from the medical line, including one individual who was practising as a doctor in the area without having an MBBS degree.
In the FIR filed in the case by Avinash’s elder brother, Chandrashekhar Jha at Benipatti police station, on 11 November, two days after Avinash went missing, he had mentioned the names of these 10 nursing homes that Avinash was going to “expose”. Chandrashekhar has further claimed that the people associated with these nursing homes, including doctors, had likely abducted his brother.
“His mobile was last found to be switched on 9 AM, 10 November, about 12 hours after he went missing. His body was identified through his finger, a mark on his feet and the gold chain that he was wearing. When he went missing after riding on his bike towards Benipatti police station, his laptop was found switched on, indicating that he had gone to meet someone for a few minutes, or else if he knew he was going for a long duration, he would have switched off his laptop”, Bikas told this newspaper.