A leader of the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party from Patna was shot dead late on Tuesday while he was at a cultural programme. Amit Bhushan Verma, the block president of Patna’s Paliganj area, is the fourth Rashtriya Lok Samta Party to be killed within a year, The Indian Express reported.
Police said the incident took place when Verma had gone for a cultural programme near the Khiri More police station. As he was leaving the stage, unidentified gunmen shot him at least four times. “The criminals managed to escape because of the darkness,” a senior police officer said. “An old enmity seems to be the reason behind the killing.”
But Rashtriya Lok Samta Party chief and Union minister Upendra Kushwaha, who visited Verma’s family, criticised the state government. “This is the fourth killing of an RLSP leader in a year,” he said. “Law and order has gone for a six in Bihar. I wonder what kind of good governance is this.”
Later, he tweeted: “Incident after incident, series of incidents, there has been selective killings… Yet, they [state government] calls it good governance. Perhaps they have changed the definition of good governance”.
On Twitter, Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, which is part of the National Democratic Alliance, asked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to take some time off from “calculating how to retain power” , and focus on bringing the criminals to justice. “Do justice to the weeping widows and families of these public representatives being killed under your so-called ‘good governance’,” it added. “After all, how long will the murders continue?”
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