Jharkhand’s Dark Secret: Police Plotting Murders to Hide Coal Mafia Crimes?

Babulal Marandi, the leader of the opposition in Jharkhand and BJP State President, has accused the state government of a disturbing strategy: fabricating new crimes to bury evidence of existing ones. Marandi asserts that the government and its associated systems are now habitually manufacturing offenses to conceal the reality of crime in Jharkhand. Recent raids by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the extensive coal mafia operations in Dhanbad have brought shocking revelations to light. However, the most concerning aspect is the alleged directive from ‘high-ranking police officials,’ whose wealth is tied to the black money from coal, to have their own enforcers within the mafia ‘permanently eliminated.’ The purported motive behind this is to silence individuals who could expose the truth, particularly those cooperating with the ED. Intelligence suggests that individuals being interrogated by the ED are now targets for assassination to prevent the truth from coming out. This strategy of ‘encountering’ evidence, rather than uncovering it, has a history in the state. Jharkhand has previously seen a DGP accused of taking contracts for staged encounters and amassing corruption, a figure even ruling party members have denounced as the most corrupt in the state’s history. The ED must proceed with extreme vigilance. Here, power lies with those who bury the truth, not those who reveal it. When the corridors of power, the administrative machinery, and organized crime align, the subversion of justice becomes an almost inevitable outcome.