The Chief Minister’s security has been tightened following the threat, presumed to be sent by the banned extremist group CPI (Maoist), to kill Nitish Kumar if two of its top leaders were not freed from jail.

A senior police officer said in Patna, the capital of Bihar, that three persons, whose mobile phone might have been used for sending the threatening SMS, have been taken into custody and that the police are investigating “from all possible angles” to arrive at a “logical conclusion.”

The police said the kill threat – in chaste Hindi – was sent to nearly half a dozen journalists. One of the journalists who received the SMS informed the police.

The SMS, sent from the mobile number 9308670993, read thus: Lal Salam – Aapke CM ka jaan khatre mein hain, agar bachana chahte hain to hamare two neta – Ravi jee and Virendra jee ko release kardo. (Salutations. Your Chief Minister is in danger. If you want to save him, you should free our two leaders, Ravi and Virendra).

Suspected extremists had on Thursday shot dead 16 villagers in Bihar, including 5 children, after they raided a village in Khagaria district.

Reacting to the threat on his life, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in Patna that he was “not scared” and that “competent state agencies” are investigating the matter.

However, the Bihar police are not so cool about the whole affair.

In the past, Maoists have killed two police officers and an officer of the Indian Forest Service (IFS) in Bihar.

In January 2005, K C Surendra Babu, a 1997-batch IPS officer and the Superintendent of Police of Munger, was murdered along with his driver and 4 securitymen in a forest near Bhimbandh, 45 kilometres from Munger.

In 2000, Ajay Singh, the Superintendent of Police of Lohardaga (now in Jharkhand), was done to death by extremists.

And, in 2002, Sanjay Singh, a young officer of the Indian Forest Service, was killed by Naxalites in Rohtas district, where he was working as the Divisional Forest Officer.

While Nitish Kumar is generally seen as having done a good job of bringing law and order back to Bihar, he has recently suffered reverses in the by-elections.

It seems Bihar is bent on keeping its “reputation” as the most criminalised state in India. Almost one dozen cases of train robberies have taken place in Bihar in the last two months in which the armed gangs of train robbers killed two passengers and seriously wounded eight others.

A businessman, who witnessed an armed robbery about two years ago in a New Delhi-bound as it was nearing Patna, the capital of Bihar, summed up the situation like this: “I always pray for my safety before I get into a train which passes through Bihar.”

So do thousands of other passengers, especially as the night falls. And, most regular passengers in Bihar-bound trains advise fellow travellers to pray for their safety till the train is out of Bihar.

Each day, over 800 trains pass through Bihar.

An officer of the Railway Police in Bihar was quoted by the media as saying that no passenger is safe in long-distance trains that pass through since armed robbers or dacoits could strike anywhere, anytime. Event the police are afraid of the robbers – they do escort duty on trains risking their life. The dacoits come in large gangs often, and the couple of policemen on duty are often powerless to do anything.

The police say that over half a dozen gangs regularly commit crimes on trains in Bihar.

As early as in 1985, the Railways Norms Committee had recommended that at least 8,000 policemen be recruited to guard the trains. However, today, 24 years later, just 3,149 constables have been deployed for the job. While some trains have just four or five armed policemen, most trains have no policemen at all on board.

Mamata Banerjee, Minister for Railway, has urged the Ministry of Home Affairs to deploy additional armed policemen on those trains that pass through Bihar that are vulnerable to robbery.

The Palamu Express has had the maximum number of armed robberies between 2004 and 2005, and hence the train is aptly nicknamed the ‘nightmare express.’

Records with the Railways and the Railway Police show that most crimes in trains passing through Bihar have occurred in the following routes and sections of the East Central Railway: Patna-Gaya, Mughalsarai-Jhajha, Danapur-Mughalsarai, Patna-Kiul, Gaya-Mughalsarai, Hajipur-Gorakhpur, and Barauni-Samastipur.

A recent report of the National Crime Records Bureau shows that 51% of all train robberies happened in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and that the jurisdiction of the Patna Railway Police alone accounts for 23% cent of all the crimes in trains committed throughout the country.

The Bureau’s report also reveals that, in the last 8 years, Bihar recorded a total of 2,076 crimes on trains – which is about 11% of the crimes that the Railway Police reported from all over the country.

Here are a few of the recent crimes on trains in Bihar:

The other day robbers killed a passenger named Mukesh Mandal at Mohanpur, near Jhajha railway station, for just having refused to hand them over his mobile phone. Mandal was shot point blank.

Armed robber looted money and objects worth about Rs 50,000 from the passengers of the Patna-Jhajha passenger train on the Jamui-Keul section of Eastern Railway. The robbers, who opened fire, made good their escape from the running train at Mohanpur station about an hour before midnight. The train did not have a single security personnel on board.

On the night of September 5, 2009, armed robbers raided a bogie for the physically challenged people in the Danapur-Howarh Express (2352 Down), resulting in one of them suffering a bullet injury. Following this ugly incident, the escort detachment of the train was placed under suspension for dereliction of duty since, according to top police officers, had the security personnel acted in time, the robbers could have been nabbed.

Motilal Yadav, a loco-driver with Eastern Railway, who was travelling as a passenger on the Poorvanchal Express, was shot by robbers on the night of September 16, 2009, when he refused to part with the Rs 52,000 he had with him. Yadav had been on his way to Gorakhpur to attend a wedding.

Again, at night, armed dacoits attacked the Delhi-bound Howrah-Delhi Lal Quila Express and robbed many passengers of their assets, after wounding four of them.

Manmohan Mahanta, an Army personnel hailing from Orissa, was thrown out of a running train by a gang of dacoits near Aurangabad in Bihar.

Five persons suffered injures while resisting looters armed with guns and knives on the Patna-Pune Express, near Ara railway station, in Bihar.

Around 50 persons were injured when a gang of around 50 armed robbers attacked the Sealdah-Jaipur express near the Dhanbad railway station in Bihar. The passengers were robbed of their cash and valuables. Those passengers who tried to overpower the assailants were cruelly beaten up.

On August 30, 2009, train robbers killed railway a gangman, Mukesh Mandal, and wounded 10 passengers of the Jhajha-Patna local train in Jamui district of Bihar, coming under the East Central Railway. The armed gang, who entered the train at Jamui, also looted mobile phones, other valuables and cash worth nearly Rs 1 lakh. The gangman was murdered when he tried to stop the looters. Again, the criminals escaped from the train after pulling the chain.

In 21st century India, dacoits can criminals can fearlessly attack trains, threaten, wound or kill passengers and loot their valuables – many would be shocked at this. Why does this continue to happen? Because the opportunity is provided, and because the robbers and dacoits in Bihar know they can operate with impunity, with no fear of being caught.

Half-hearted measures to prevent crimes in trains are not going to help. What is required here is an acknowledgement of the problem, and then the political will to ensure that this would not happen. Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar has done a lot of good work in reducing crime rate in the state by better law and order enforcement. It is time the cops in Bihar, as well as the Indian Railways whose prime responsibility this is, to ensure that that adequate police personnel are deployed in the trains to deter the dacoits, as well as proactive measures to identify and jail the criminals.

Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) have got into a seat-sharing deal with each other, leaving their UPA partner Indian National Congress in the lurch.

Congress was counting on contesting in more seats from Bihar state in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, and had believed it would be able to wrangle a better deal for itself from the Bihar strongman Lalu Prasad Yadav. According to the seat-sharing deal for the Lok Sabha elections announced by RJD and LJP, there will be just three seats left for the Congress. This would mean that unless fruitful negotiations take place between RJD, LJP and Congress, Congress would have to fight on its own in Bihar. Not a welcome state of affairs for the leading part of the UPA under any circumstances.

As a part of the seat-sharing agreement between RJD and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) for Bihar, RJD chief Lalu Prasad conceded four Lok Sabha seats from his party’s quota to the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). LJP, according to the agreement, will now contest 12 seats in Bihar, up from the 8 seats which had been set aside for it in 2004, but still short of the 16 constituencies demanded by it. The agreement was made yesterday. “The alliance will happen cent per cent,” Union Minister and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan told reporters. RJD will contest 25 seats in Bihar.

Paswan also explained, “Some adjustments are made when talks happen. Patliputra was also among the 16 seats we demanded but Ranjan Yadav whom we wanted to field there has now left,” he added. He also clarified that the alliance will be on honourable conditions and all allies would contest on equal footing.

Lalu Prasad Yadav also offered words on the occasion, “We’re fighting to form a secular government,” Lalu told reporters. “We’re with the UPA and will remain with the UPA,” he added.

That may be so technically – but the much-vanunted trust between Sonia Gandhi and Lalu Prasad Yadav has now been broken, and the Congress is taking it as a betrayal. That way, this is very similar to the way Naveen patnaik’s BJD ditched the BJP in Orissa when it came to deciding on seats for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

Between the two strong caste-leaders Paswan and Lalu, there is a good chance that they would be able to put up a strong fight against the reasonably popular Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal (United). In the last general election, the UPA had bagged 29 seats from Bihar state, while the JD(U)-BJP combine could manage just 11. The RJD bagged 22, while the LJP could only win four.

The seats set aside for the LJP include Hajipur (SC), Samastipur (SC), Nawada, Paschim Champaran, Supaul, Araria, Purnia, Katihar, Begusarai, Nalanda and Jamui (SC). For the 12th seat, there is a toss-up between Muzaffarpur and Gaya (SC).

No Congress leader was present at the press conference. When asked about the absence of Congress leaders, the railway minister said “We have not called them to the press conference.” In the last elections, the three parties RJD, Congress and LJP had contested under a pre-poll agreement in which CPI and NCP were also a part. CPI is now no longer with the UPA and NCP has already announced that it would contest 14 seats.

Of the four constituencies from where it had contested in 2004, Congress had won Aurangabad, Madhubani and Sasaram seats.

Lalu and Paswan had parted ways in the 2005 assembly elections. This time around however Lalu is said to have been under tremendous pressure from its MPs as well as senior leaders who wanted him to not contest less than 24 seats.

Congress has the interests of the UPA to keep in mind, and potential government forming once the elections are over. So the party would find it difficult to take on RJD and LJP alleging betrayal, as that might boomerang after the election results are announced.