Patna, June 8: Forget the colours in Delhi, Bihar’s escape routes are sealed. Laloo Yadav’s fiefdom continues to remain trapped in the burning caste and land cauldron.

Two incidents on Friday — both unrelated — exposed the common thread that ties the fate of the people in knots. One took place in a brick-kiln at Nalanda and the other outside the main gate of the Assembly in the capital. While 12 Dalit labourers were killed in cold blood in Nalanda over a caste and business feud, a woman RJD legislator broke down outside the Assembly just before the session began, when she received the news that the mutilated bodies of her abducted parents in-law were recovered in Purnea.

The incidents are not new to Bihar. If the battle for caste domination and extortion by criminal gangs define the first, the second is a fallout of the ongoing war between the landless and landlords.

Failure to meet the extortion demand and business rivalry are being cited as the probable reasons for the murder of 12 kiln workers at Benar village in Nalanda. The state government has “punished” a couple of lower-rung police officers and the district magistrate by transferring them, though it is believed that the carnage was a result of rivalry between two businessmen.

Apparently the area is littered with brick kilns, most of which are illegal. Three persons were killed following an extortion row last month, sources said.

Asthawan block is controlled by two gangs led by Bipin Choudhary and Bhaju Yadav. They enjoy monopoly over the extortion trade in the area, sources said. On the other hand, the People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre extort huge sums from kiln owners in Islampur area.

The backward Kurmi and Yadav groups own most kilns and are usually targeted by gangs of rival caste. In north Bihar’s Purnea district, the class war still rages.

The killing of four members of an MLA’s family, allegedly by the North Bihar Liberation Army recently, was reciprocated by a Faizan party strike. It has once again revived the fight between the landless Dalits and the landed Rajputs and Bengalis, the original landowners.

“The killings are shocking, but not surprising in a district where clashes between the landless and the landlords have claimed several lives so far,” a former Communist activist and Patna High Court lawyer Rajeev Roy said.

The police are yet to achieve a breakthrough in the murder of the relatives of RJD legislator Bima Bharati.

The legislator’s parents in-law and four others, all residents of Rupauli, were abducted and their bodies found murdered near Bajra village in the Bhawanipur police station area on Friday.

“Raids are being conducted with the help additional forces. We hope to make some breakthrough soon,” deputy superintendent of police, Purnea, Ashok Kumar said.