The Kendriya Vihar Co-operative Society in Navi Mumbai, where Bibek’s parents stay. (Fotocorp)

New Delhi, June 2: A distraught Rahul Mahajan was the obvious image to dominate the media in the days after Pramod Mahajan’s murder. Yet a truer legatee of the BJP fund manager was the young man who died today in similarly bizarre circumstances.

It’s difficult to think of 39-year-old Bibek Moitra independently of his mentor. He was Pramod’s shadow, his confidant and his right-hand man, following him everywhere just a step behind.

To many in the BJP, the secretary’s death a month after Pramod’s ? in circumstances equally dramatic and mysterious ? is more than a strange twist of fate. They believe that aide and master are linked in death by the thread that tied them in life: big money.

Pramod’s death has left behind mounting concerns in the BJP about where the money he had raised for the party might have disappeared.

With police having traced a call made to Rahul yesterday by a property dealer in east Delhi and Ghaziabad, Nitin Goyal, the party is abuzz with speculation.

Most in the party agree that if the call had anything to do with financial deals, Bibek would have been involved. Rahul and Bibek had spent the evening together yesterday.

Political fund managers are believed to invest the money they collect through channels such as benami. Since these transactions are based on personal trust, the threat of the politician’s physical presence is crucial in keeping the investor from grabbing the benami properties.

The fear that all Pramod’s clandestine investments may have been appropriated is all too evident in party circles.

Most senior BJP leaders, however, have hastened to dismiss all talk of shadowy property dealers and dirty money that could smear the party itself.

What is coming out, instead, is a tale of a son gone astray, of Bibek’s contribution to the extravagant lifestyle of Pramod and Rahul, of drug abuse and orgies. There are whispers about a dance bar that Bibek allegedly ran in Mumbai, and his clandestine dealings with drug peddlers.

It’s difficult, though, to associate the staid and dour Bibek with the licentious lifestyle now being attributed to him. He was portly and diabetic, worried about his weight and was fastidious about what he ate and drank.

Partymen have always known the law graduate as an uncommonly grave young man with a flair for languages.

“He was spotted when Pramod wanted a letter translated from Marathi to English. Bibek did it in no time though he was not from Maharashtra. Over time, all of us almost forgot that Bibek was a Bengali,” a senior leader close to the Mahajans said.

Pramod began grooming Bibek, then an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activist, from an early age.

As the mentor grew to be his party’s key link with business and big money, Bibek’s role widened from drafting and translating letters.

Over nearly two decades of association, he became Pramod’s confidant and the fountainhead of his dirty tricks department. He fixed appointments, made investments, took care of Pramod’s personal details and lived in the Mahajans’ house.

Bibek, known to work 19 hours a day, had handled all by himself some of the biggest assignments Pramod was given by the BJP, such as the “India Shining” campaign and the Rajasthan Assembly elections.

For the faith shown in him, the secretary paid his boss back with a jealous loyalty. “He was like a bulldog guarding his master; he wouldn’t even let anyone make a joke about Pramod Mahajan,” a party insider recalled.

The police are examining the suicide angle, too ? the one hypothesis that would suit the BJP best.

A senior party leader said Bibek may have been “disenchanted with life” following his failed love affair.

The young man was believed to be in love with a German woman, a single mother. They apparently lived together for a while as Bibek waited for his parents to agree to their marriage. “But things didn’t work out; Bibek’s parents were against the match,” the BJP leader said.

With many more theories likely to sprout over the next few days, the BJP is bracing for the “sewage rush” it had been fearing ever since Pramod’s death.