Lalu looks to mend ties with late don Shahabuddin’s wife

Aksheev Thakur

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

After losing massively in Bihar’s Siwan Lok Sabha constituency, the RJD has gone back to Hena Shahab, the wife of late gangster-turned-politician and party’s former MP Mohd Shahabuddin, to woo Muslim voters.

Following Shahabuddin’s death in 2021, Shahab’s relationship with RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav became estranged. Though the JD(U) won the Siwan seat in the recent General Election, Shahab secured the second position as Independent, relegating RJD’s Awadh Bihari Choudhary to the third slot.

Sources in the RJD confirmed that Lalu and his son Tejashwi Yadav met Shahab in Patna. With the Bihar Assembly elections due next year, the meeting is being viewed as an attempt to consolidate Muslim voters.

A senior RJD leader said though the meeting was aimed at burying the hatchet, Shahab wanted the RJD to field her son from a safe seat in the Assembly elections. “Shahab wants a safe seat for her son Osama. Lalu, however, told her that the RJD will back her candidature for the Bihar Legislative Council,” he said.

While there are no criminal cases against Shahab, rival JD(U) and BJP are citing the alleged “jungle raj” during the RJD tenure to target her, with her husband Shahabuddin being the party’s “poster boy”.