Ojha, a paediatric surgeon, examines a baby in a Patna hospital. (Reuters)

Patna, March 18 (Reuters): On one of the biggest festivals of the Hindu year, a time for family and friends, doctor Purnendu Ojha sits alone, locked behind the heavy iron gates of a children’s clinic here.

There is no colour, no celebration here.

Instead, visitors are greeted with undisguised suspicion; checked and double-checked before being allowed in.

“Everything is locked. I have no social visits, no happiness. I have sent my children outside the state,” he says, shaking his head nervously. “Very sad. Without family, there’s no life at all.”

Ojha is a lucky man. He’ still alive.

The BJP is campaigning heavily on the good life and a booming economy in its bid for re-election in the Lok Sabha election.

But in “wild west” Bihar, the only thing booming is the business of kidnap and murder, a symbol of the rampant lawlessness threatening local and foreign businesses.

“It’s the only industry that’s flourishing,” says a local journalist, too frightened to be named. And doctors, vulnerable and relatively well-off, are a prime target.

Thirty-eight-year-old Ojha, one of the top paediatric surgeons in Patna, was dragged away by armed men as he left a private clinic for home, 500 metres away, one evening in September2001.

“For the first two days, they treated me very nicely, but not like a 5-star hotel,” he says. “After that, they were harassing me. Every moment, every second, I was scared. I was afraid they would kill me.”

Ojha, whose brother is one of Bihar’s top policemen, was released unharmed after four or five days. No one ever admits paying a ransom in Bihar, but Ojha’s kidnappers originally sought up to Rs 10 million.

“Doctors are a very soft target. We are very exposed, very vulnerable. Everyone knows us,” he says. “Since it happened, the sense of insecurity, the shakiness, the uncertainty, is always there. The quality of life is not there. No happiness. My sons were emotionally traumatised. They are always saying, ‘Papa don’t go alone, don’t move.’”

Scores of doctors, other professionals and even impoverished farmers are kidnapped every month across Bihar.

There is a parallel trade in extortion. Crime gangs offer protection against kidnapping — but only by themselves, not by other gangs. Those who refuse the insurance are often murdered.

Many doctors and business people have fled Bihar. The state branch of the medical association has urged doctors to carry guns, some move around only with armed guards and most run checks on new patients before they see them.

Bihar’s notoriety as India's crime capital was recently back in the headlines when a young and promising engineer, Satyendra Dubey, was executed after a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee warning about unbridled corruption on a major national highways project was leaked.

It remains a real threat to millions of Indians and to foreign business people here, who must navigate their way through a gauntlet of crime, corruption and intimidation.

An Australian project manager and several Malaysians were recently held hostage in a state government office for several hours by gun-toting thugs seeking money for local contractors in Bhopal.

“The police wouldn’t do anything,” the project manager said. After convincing the hoods they had no money, the foreigners fled to the airport and caught the next flight out, leaving behind their belongings in their hotel room.

And another businessman posted with a telecommunications giant tells of one of India’s biggest conglomerates sending guard dogs after a colleague as a negotiating tactic after late night talks broke down in the hi-tech capital of Bangalore.

“It’s unbelievable,” he says. “These dogs. Big dogs. They literally set the dogs on him. I’m serious!”