Pappu Yadav speaks to one of the students at PMCH on Tuesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Dec. 2: Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, the don-turned-RJD MP from Madhepura who faces a “gag order” from his party leadership, today trained his guns on the Jitan Ram Manjhi government over the alleged police assault on two JDU student leaders in Ara recently.

Pappu landed here today to meet Prince Singh Bajrangi (22) and Kumud Patel (21) admitted to Patna Medical College Hospital. Prince and Kumud got injured in the alleged police lathicharge on them at Ara, the Bhojpur district headquarters on November 28, in the wake of some unruly scenes during Nitish Kumar’s Sampark Yatra.

Pappu, while lashing out at the Manjhi government for using the police to “unleash” brutality on the youths, said he would raise the issue in the current session of Parliament. “It seems that collector and SP raaj has not gone from our society. I am not going to sit silent. I will take up the cause of the JDU students’ wing leaders with Parliament,” Pappu said.

Today, he went to the extent of describing Manjhi as Dhritrastra (the mythical Kaurava king who was born blind). Pointed out that Manjhi had criticised the assault on the youths and has also promised action against the “erring” officials, Pappu said. “I am not a Dhritrastra. He (Manjhi) should have taken tough action against the Bhojpur district magistrate and SP by now. As the chief minister, he is himself in the capacity of taking action on the officials. But he is sitting idle leaving the youths and poor people at the mercy of cane holding policemen.”

It is not for the first time that Pappu has attacked Manjhi. He had described Manjhi as “nikamma” (inefficient) in the past also.

The RJD has disassociated itself from the Yuva Shakti, a youth forum floated by Pappu that has aggressively been carrying out campaign against the doctors for “fleecing” poor patients in the Kosi-Seemanchal region.

The party leadership has asked Pappu not to do anything unsanctioned by it while it has also asked the cadres not to participate in any programme organised under the banner of Yuva Shakti.

In an apparent bid to create his own constituency and become the leader in his own capacity, Pappu has consistently rebelled against the leadership. After elected as an MP on Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party ticket in 1990s he rebelled against the SP, crossing over to the LJP of Ram Vilas Paswan. He rebelled against Paswan too switching over to the RJD and getting elected on the RJD ticket in 2004. He rebelled against Lalu too. He joined the RJD on the eve of the May elections to get elected from Madhepura on RJD ticket.

Students of Chhatra Samagam today burnt effigy of the additional superintendent of police and subdivisional police officer in protest against the “brutality of police” around Ara railway station.

The state RJD chief, Ramchandra Purbe, also avoided Pappu as the former visited the PMCH an hour ahead of the Madhepura strongman. Purbe had gone to see the RJD general secretary, Mundrika Singh Yadav, who had issued gag order on Pappu and had announced that the party would take action against him. Pappu did not meet Mundrika who admitted to the PMCH with cold and fever.