Too poor to pay fine, have only gun, car: RJD MLA

Bihar MLA Ravindra Singh, who has been ordered to pay a fine of ₹10 lakh by the Supreme Court for misusing its jurisdiction, says he does not have the money, as his only possessions are a gun and an SUV. Faced with the order asking him to pay the fine within four weeks, the Rashtriya Janata Dal legislator says he would not be in a position to comply with it, “come what may”. “Besides the revolver bought in 2003 and the SUV taken on bank loan last year, I own nothing,” he told The Hindu on Thursday.

“Though I fully honour the order, before it imposed the fine, the Supreme Court should have checked my bank passbook and got my property details. Besides, I did not get the justice for which I had gone to the court,” argues Mr. Singh, who was elected for the second time from Arwal in Jehanabad district.

Government bodyguards

Sitting in a modest three bedroom flat on Jagdeo Path in western Patna, Mr. Singh, 64, was unfazed. “Why should I worry? Let the court check my finances and review its order,” he said.

Three government bodyguards live in his house, along with his 100-year old mother, his son and family.

The MLA was a Maoist when central Bihar was mired in bloody caste violence in the early 1990s.

“I was underground for 12-14 years and police raided my house 135 times, attaching my property three times,” he says. When Lalu Prasad became Chief Minister, the district police, in a supervision report in 1994, gave the MLA a clean chit in all cases.

Mr. Singh’s election affidavit for 2015 says he has a revolver and a rifle, bank deposits of ₹80,000 and immovable assets of 4.32 acre agricultural land and a 1,300 sq. ft. house in Aurangabad district.

His legal troubles began in 2015 after he filed a writ petition in the Patna High Court asking for a probe into a news report in Nyay Chakra , a magazine edited by Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan in 1994.

The report, he said, claimed that a secret letter was issued by RSS functionaries to workers asking them to create trouble for minorities, Ambedkarites and Dalits.

The Patna HC dismissed the petition on December 6 last calling it “unjustified”. The defiant MLA approached the Supreme Court and, on February 10 this year, the court dismissed the petition, imposing exemplary costs and fine. “Before I approached the court, I had written to the President, the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the Lok Sabha Speaker, the Home Secretary, and the Chief Minister of Bihar,” he said.