I want him hanged,” Draupadi Devi says, between bouts of tears and practical exchanges with relatives on what to do next. Her daughter and two sons have just been killed by a man who lived across the street. He had allegedly stood less than 25 metres away, and shot at six of her family of 18. Her husband and two daughters-in-law survive, no doubt scarred by the trauma of November 20, when the tragedy took place.
The police say Ashish Choudhary, 25, used two 9-mm pistols, one in each hand, to shoot at the family members between 7.30 a.m. and 7.45 a.m., as they returned after offering prayers to the rising sun on the last day of Chhath Puja. During the four-day festival, married women pray for the well-being of their partners and children.
Choudhary fled soon after, and has not been caught yet. “He first shot at the woman, and then at the rest of the family,” says Lakhisarai Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Raushan Kumar. Bloodstains in the gali (alley) outside, where the walls of the man’s and woman’s homes almost meet, still look fresh, a gory reminder to visitors, who come to support Devi, of the tragedy.
The police say Choudhary, a Dalit, and Devi’s daughter, a Brahmin, were in love, got married, lived in Patna briefly, and were summoned back home by her family. They claim that Choudhary, enraged that his ‘wife’ seemed to be romantically involved with ‘another’ man, committed the crime. One of the guns and four live cartridges have been recovered from close to where the murders took place.
“My daughter never married Choudhary; she never married anyone. The police are lying,” says Devi, sitting in her bedroom, with the plaster of its green walls peeling, and an orange mosquito net bundled up on one wall. A single exposed white LED bulb glows in the background. “He actually wanted to grab our one kattha land (a little over 125 square metres) between his house and ours,” she says, as two relatives comfort her. The neighbours live in Punjabi mohalla, dominated by Scheduled Castes and Muslims.
The aftermath
Shashi Bhushan Jha, 60, Devi’s husband, and the couple’s daughters-in-law are still in the ICU at Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), with injuries to the head and below the neck. “Immediately after the incident, passers-by rushed them to Lakhisarai Sadar Hospital. From here, they were referred to PMCH,” says Kumar.
Devi’s sons, Rajnandan Jha, 40, and Chandan Jha, 31, were declared dead on arrival. Her daughter died the next day. Three children survive Rajnandan, two survive Chandan. Devi’s youngest son, Kundan Jha, had lingered at the ghats where the puja is performed, and so, was spared gunshot wounds, and possibly, death. He is now at the hospital, seeing to the needs of the surviving family members.
“I have lost both my older brothers and younger sister. What can be worse than this? I just want my father to get well soon. The person who did this should be given the death penalty,” he says, echoing his mother.
The accused is a small-time property dealer and has two older brothers, one reportedly living in Delhi and the other in Lakhisarai, say the police. A neighbour, Devendra Kumar, says Choudhary’s father cannot go far as he is paralysed. (The police later traced the father to the accused’s brother’s house in Lakhisarai.)
Meagre means
Devi and Shashi’s only source of income was the rent from the single-storey house with 18 rooms, six of which the family occupied. None of the tenants were present — all had gone to their hometowns for Chhath, Bihar’s biggest annual festival. Their two older sons ran a photo frame shop in the locality.
The home, in need of paint and a clean-up, has a hand pump on the veranda, where children, seemingly unaware of the tragedy, play. Sudha Devi, a relative, asks rhetorically, “Why would a Brahmin family allow their daughter to marry a man from a Scheduled Caste?”
Choudhary’s two-storey house is locked, with two police constables deputed outside. Both houses are visible from the Lakhisarai railway station, with Devi’s house, painted in fluorescent blue-green, standing in contrast to Choudhary’s bare brick-and-mortar one.
Hare Lal Pandey, a neighbour, says that people from the Brahmin community were not happy with the way the alleged couple had fallen in love. “There was gossip that both had even married without informing their families,” he says.
Married or not
Sanjay Kumar, Deputy Inspector General of Police in the Munger range, under whose jurisdiction Lakhisarai falls, says, “Both had got married four years ago in a temple in Patna, and they stayed together on Nala road.” He adds that they have not yet traced the landlord.
“We have evidence that both were married as we have recovered hundreds of photos from the house of the main accused. In many of the photographs, both are seen happy. She has used sindoor on her forehead and even wears a mangalsutra [both marks of a married Hindu woman],” he says, adding that in one of the photos, the woman and her mother are with Choudhary.
On his social media profile pages, the details of which were shared by the police, Choudhary calls himself Ashish Raj. His alleged Facebook account, with 4,982 ‘friends’, says he is “married”, with pictures of him with a woman with sindoor and mangalsutra, from January 2022.
Arrests and an investigation
So far, there have been two arrests: Umesh Shao, a property dealer, who the police claim supplied the guns, and Sameer Raj, who provided the live location of the family as they walked home from the ghat. Choudhary, the police say, was waiting outside the house. As per the call detail records (CDRs), four calls were traced between Raj and Choudhary, from 7.05 a.m. to 7.41 a.m.
The police have also recovered a 15-page handwritten document allegedly written by Choudhary the night before the murders. In the note, dated November 20, he allegedly claims responsibility for the crime and says none of his family members are a part of it.
The opening page of the letter has his name, his father’s name (Durga Choudhary), locality, ward number 15, street number 7, all details required to register an FIR. The police have sent the letter for forensic examination.
Page 4 (each page is numbered with a circle around the number) talks about the family asking the couple to return home, with the promise of a socially acceptable wedding, to save her father’s ‘dignity’. As per the document, Shashi had requested them not to have children until they were ‘properly’ married, because it would be embarrassing for him to face society.
Page 7 goes on to say that Choudhary received photographs from an unknown mobile number one day. These were of his ‘wife’ with another man. When he called the number, it was answered by Sumit Kumar, who claimed that the woman had been romantically involved with him for three years. Kumar, who lives in Bhagalpur, 100 km away from Lakhisarai, denies having a romantic relationship with the woman. “I was just a friend,” he says.
Pages 10 and 11 say that Choudhary’s ‘wife’ came to his house one day and abused him with casteist slurs. These two particular incidents made him angry, leading to his decision. The last line of the letter says that the accused visited Ashok Dham in Lakhisarai on November 19 to pray to Shiva and seek his blessings. His Instagram handle shows him at numerous religious centres, with Shiva tattoos on his body.
ASP Kumar says, “Choudhary wrote the letter at one stretch. Every minute detail and the places he visited match the CDRs.” He says he also visited the 12 jyotirlingas (shrines dedicated to Shiva) in India, and took his father on religious trips to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, and Gangasagar in West Bengal last year. The letter ends with “Jai Shri Ram”.
On social media posts, the accused is seen handling snakes. The police have announced a reward of ₹50,000 for information on him.
Inter-caste marriages
The Bihar government, in a bid to promote inter-caste marriage, gives ₹2.5 lakh under the Bihar Antarjatiya Vivah Protsahan Yojana, to a newly married couple once they submit supporting documents.
Following the murders, local BJP leaders protested outside the Kawaiya police station, where an FIR has been registered against Choudhary under Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means) of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 25(1)B of the Arms Act.
Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Vijay Kumar Sinha, who is also the Lakhisarai MLA, visited Devi. At a press conference at the Lakhisarai Circuit House, he said the crime rate had increased in the State and criminals were roaming freely under the Nitish Kumar government. He also demanded proper compensation to the family of the deceased. “The bread earners have been killed. Who will take care of a family that has lost two sons and a daughter?” Sinha said.
BJP MLA Shreyashi Singh stressed that personal photographs of the couple should not have been shown to the media, and that the National Commission for Women must take immediate cognisance of such matters.
According to the Bihar caste survey report, which was tabled in the Assembly during the winter session earlier this month, poverty was highest among the Scheduled Castes. A quarter of the Brahmin families in the State too were economically poor, the report said.
