Slain Bihar policeman Lucas Tete’s daughter, Anjela Tete, has put her mind and heart to the hostage crisis staged by the Maoists in Lakhiserai, but has failed to join the missing dots in the sensational, coldblooded murder of her father. The bereaved tribal girl believes only a probe by the CBI could unravel the “politics behind this closely-guarded mystery.”
Busy consoling her widowed mother, Pyari Tete, and her two younger sisters, Manjula and Neelam, at her modest rural home in Jharkhand’s Maoist-affected Simdega district, the grief-stricken Anjela, 21, looks like any other unassuming, college-going tribal girl. But her father’s murder by the very Maoists who claim to be championing the cause of the tribals has set her asking questions and seeking answers. “The Bihar government’s little-known negotiations with the Maoists finally ended the nine-day-long hostage crisis. Nobody knows if the Maoists lied about which of the four hostages they had killed or they were forced to lie. Only a CBI probe into the Bihar government’s negotiations with the Maoists can reveal the politics behind this closely-guarded mystery. I will formally seek a CBI investigation,” said Anjela, a student of MA (Hindi literature) final year at Ranchi University, to this newspaper at her home at Kolebira. The murder of Bihar Military Police (BMP) assistant sub-inspector Lucas Tete by the Maoists in captivity on September 2 as a ploy to step up pressure on the Bihar government has caused strong resentment in Jharkhand’s tribal areas as much against the Maoists as against Bihar’s Nitish Kumar-led government.