CPI-ML (Liberation) activists hold up a train near Ara during the bandh on Tuesday. Picture by Sanjay Shrivastava

Patna, March 5: The state government today largely succeeded in ensuring peace during the dawn-to-dusk Bhojpur bandh called by the CPI-ML (Liberation) to demand justice in the massacre of 10 Dalits at Nagri village.

Left cadres disrupted road and rail traffic at some places in the district.

Patna, barely 60km away from what has been a nerve centre of the caste war between Dalits under the CPI-ML (Liberation) banner and Ranvir Sena for decades, witnessed more violence with agitating contract teachers and security forces fighting a pitched battle on its streets.

“But if you look at bigger and deeper picture, Bhojpur just conceals intense social conflict smouldering beneath what looks life a quiet atmosphere,” said an MLA from the region, adding: “The district has been in the spell of tension particularly after the high court acquitted 23 culprits of the Bathani Tola massacre on April 16 last year and the subsequent murder of Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Mukhiya at Ara on June 1.”

“What has added to the political dimension to the conflict,” the MLA, preferring anonymity, said: “The upper castes, mainly the sympathisers and cadres of the slain Sena chief, owe allegiance to the BJP which protects their interest. The Dalits and the weaker section at war with upper castes were the JD(U)’s newly acquired social base in the wake of Nitish reserving 50 per cent of seats in local bodies to the Extremely Backward Classes and Mahadalits and showering other largesse on these sections.

The divide at the political level came to the fore today when C.P. Thakur demanded that the government should not move the Supreme Court against the high court order acquitting 11 persons in the Nagri massacre.

Thakur’s stand was in sharp contrast to the CPI-ML (Liberation) and also the victims’ demand from the government to move Supreme Court against the HC order.