Patna:Income-tax official Ram Babu Gupta, who was arrested in Patna on Wednesday on the charge of sexually assaulting a minor girl from Sikkim studying at his residential coaching centre, is a household name in the corridors of power in Bihar.
A galaxy of politicians, including Nitish Kumar, had attended a function Gupta organised at Laxmipur village under Sonbarsa block in Sitamarhi district on July 19, 2014. Nitish, who was not the chief minister then, was invited by Gupta and his wife Rati Gupta a.k.a Aditi Gupta to honour the students of Eklavya Super 50 who had got five top positions in the merit list of the Bihar board examination held in 2014. Former ministers Mahachandra Prasad Singh and Alok Mehta, RJD state president Ram Chandra Purbey and then MLC Raj Kishore Kushwaha had shared the dais with the Guptas.
"I have very faint memory of the function. As far as I recall, we had all gone there for a noble cause," Purbey said when contacted.
Mahachandra Prasad Singh refused to talk to The Telegraph after listening to the question related to the Sitamarhi function.
A senior IAS officer, who was then posted in north Bihar, said Nitish had gone to Laxmipur by helicopter. "Nitish ji was so impressed that he went to Sitamarhi to fete the students," the bureaucrat said under cover of anonymity.
Laxmipur is the native place of Gupta, from where he had started free coaching for students belonging to economically and socially backward sections of the society.
The Eklavya Super 50's Facebook page, which has a picture of Nitish with the Guptas and students of the institute as its cover photo, claims that Union minister Upendra Kushwaha is a guardian of one of the students enrolled at the institute in Patna.
Some residents of Sitamarhi said that Rati had once staked claim for contesting the Assembly election from Sonbarsa as she was considered close to a senior JDU leader. Gupta and his wife later started living separately.
The girl who has accused Gupta has told the court that she was not his first victim. "Such incident has happened with other inmates of the girls' hostel, but they kept mum due to social stigma," she is learnt to have said.
Gupta's septuagenarian father, Jai Narayan Mahto, claimed his son was being framed. "His growing popularity and connections with the VIPs made many people envious of him, who implicated him in a false case," Mahto told The Telegraph.
Jai Narayan, an influential farmer of Sitamarhi, lives at Mela Road Lohia Nagar in the district headquarters town. Gupta's house in Laxmipur was locked when a local journalists visited it after his arrest in Patna.
