When the Red Voice Was Silenced and Bihar Lost A Revolution
Purnea city amid Bihar Assembly elections 20205 (Image Amit Kumar)
The brutal killing of CPI(M) leader Ajit Sarkar in Purnea — sprayed with 107 bullets — wasn’t just a political murder. It marked the end of a fearless, people-first politics in Bihar’s Seemanchal and the triumph of fear over ideology.
By AMIT KUMAR
Purnea (Bihar), October 22, 2025 — There are moments in a state’s political history when a single act of violence defines an entire era.
For Bihar, that moment came on June 14, 1998, in Purnea — when Comrade Ajit Sarkar, the fiery Marxist leader of the poor, was riddled with 107 bullets.
The sound of gunfire that evening was more than the death of one man. It was the silencing of an idea — that politics could belong to the people, not just to those who wielded money or muscle.
A Revolutionary in a Feudal Land
To understand Ajit Sarkar’s death, one must first understand the landscape he lived in — Seemanchal, a region as fertile in rebellion as it is in floodplains. Purnea, Araria, Kishanganj, and Supaul were not just names on Bihar’s map; they were battlefields between poverty and privilege, landlords and labourers, hope and despair.
Born in 1947, the son of a homeopath doctor, Sarkar could have chosen an easier life. Instead, he chose struggle. As a CPI(M) MLA elected four times, he waged relentless campaigns for land redistribution, often marching shoulder to shoulder with farmers who had nothing but faith in “Ajit Da.”
He had no motorcade, no mansion, no musclemen. He lived in a rented house in Purnea, his wife — a schoolteacher — managed the family’s modest means. His election campaigns were funded not by industrialists but by people tossing one-rupee coins into a gamchha he spread out in the market.
This simplicity was his power. And that power threatened those who thrived on fear.
The Day Hope Was Hunted Down
That June evening, returning from a panchayat meeting, Sarkar’s jeep was ambushed. The assassins fired AK-47 rifles with the kind of precision that only professional killers possess. Two aides fell with him. The postmortem counted 107 bullets — an overkill that betrayed not just intent, but hatred.
It was a political execution — not to eliminate a rival, but to erase a movement.
The timing was grimly symbolic. Only a day earlier, then-minister Brij Bihari Prasad had been shot dead in Patna. Bihar was burning — trapped between criminalization and caste, gun and ballot, muscle and money. The era that journalists would later call the “jungle raj” had already taken root.
Justice Deferred, Ideals Betrayed
The CBI named Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, Rajan Tiwari, and others as accused. A lower court found them guilty, but the Patna High Court in 2013 acquitted them, citing lack of evidence. By then, eight years had passed, witnesses had turned, and the memory of Ajit Sarkar had faded from nightly news. The CBI’s appeal in the Supreme Court remains a file in waiting.
Justice, like so much else in Bihar’s hinterland, moved at the speed of politics.
A Bihar Between Two Eras
Ajit Sarkar’s murder wasn’t just an event; it was a moral demarcation line. It marked the end of a Bihar that still had room for ideology — for belief in change through conviction, not coercion. After Sarkar, politics became transactional. Leaders became brands. And the poor, whom Sarkar called his people, became voting blocs to be managed, not movements to be led.
When I visited Purnea years later, I found a city changed — bustling markets, neon lights, malls, smooth roads. But beneath that progress lies a quiet absence. The kind of politics Ajit Sarkar practiced — fearless, principled, and poor-friendly — has almost vanished.
The Legacy That Refuses to Die
Sarkar’s widow, Madhavi Sarkar, tried to carry forward his ideals, even serving as an MLA. Their son Amit Sarkar, after surviving an attack, sought refuge in Austria. The family’s journey mirrors Bihar’s — resilient, scarred, but never entirely broken.
Even today, when elections approach in Seemanchal, Ajit Sarkar’s name returns — whispered by old farmers, invoked by the Left, mourned by those who remember when politics had a soul.
Because in Bihar’s blood-soaked political history, Ajit Sarkar stands as both a martyr and a mirror — a reminder of what the state once was, and what it might have been, had courage triumphed over bullets.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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