From The Ground: Bihar Man Who Once Presided Naxal 'Courts' Hopes For Change
With the Bihar Assembly elections around the corner, ETV Bharat travelled all the way to Dhangai village in Gaya to gauge the mood, challenges and the change on the ground.
By Bilal Bhat
Published : October 22, 2025 at 3:36 PM IST
|Updated : October 23, 2025 at 8:14 AM IST
(Dev Raj and Brijam Pandey contributed to the report)
Dhangai (Barachatti, Gaya): There is hardly a house in Dhangai that has not fed a Naxalite. For years, residents of this village, nestled deep in the woods of central Bihar’s Gaya district, were forced to provide food and shelter to the red rebels and turn up at their ‘Jan Adalats’, the Naxal Kangaroo courts, which were quite common those days.
Villagers, both young and old, recall how Naxals would come in hordes, climbing down the nearby Ghera Hills that flank and separate Dhangai from Jharkhand.
The metalled narrow road ends at the village, and so does the development. A dirt road leads one towards the Hills that surround the hamlet, located around 150 km south of the state capital, Patna.
They would seek food – one Naxalite per household – pass orders in their ‘Jan Adalats’, and take over schools, marking Independence and Republic Days with hoisting of black flags, serving a message that it was the Naxal guns that ruled the hamlet.
Things are different now. As the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre carries on a massive operation to rid India of Naxalism by March 2026, Dhangai appears to have come out of its shell.
The residents, while gathering courage to speak about the tough past, also voice hopes and cynicism about their future, especially since the state elections are days away. Dhangai, as part of the Barachatti constituency, is going to vote on November 11 in the assembly elections.
The higher secondary school, one of the few signs of a government in this village, is also a place where residents converge after a day of toil in the fields.
The campus brings back memories of the Naxal Kangaroo courts held here countless times. Villagers recall how they kept their children away from education for fear of being persecuted in the ‘Jan Adalat’ for defying the Naxal diktats.
Shyam Bihari Singh, a CPIML leader who commands respect in the village, claims he was forced to preside over several such ‘adalats’, summoned by the Naxals.
“I have forgotten the number of ‘Jan Adalats’ I presided over against my wishes. Various types of punishment, including death, were meted out to the ‘accused’. I opposed the practice and encouraged the villagers to speak, but they were afraid to do so after seeing heavily-armed Naxals who encircled us,” said Shyam as he spoke to the visiting ETV Bharat team.
He recalled how Naxal commanders would order punishments according to their whims despite glaring evidence of a person’s innocence.
Shyam asserted that Naxalism had taken a beating and was no longer an issue in Dhangai. He claims only a few of its followers talk about the ideology, while a majority chose to pick up arms out of personal enmity, rivalry or after running away from their families and homes.
In the same breath, he also expressed his admiration for Vijay Kumar Arya, a 64-year-old Naxal ideologue considered among the top leaders of the left-wing extremist movement.
A postgraduate in Economics, Arya worked as an assistant professor for a brief period before joining the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI).
He eventually became part of the umbrella organisation, CPI(Maoist), a conglomerate of several Naxal groups, before going underground. He was active in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and the undivided Andhra Pradesh until his arrest in Samahuta village in Rohtas district in 2022. Arya is currently lodged in the Beur central jail in Patna and faces around 14 cases related to various incidents of violence and subversive activities in Bihar, apart from a few others in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Andhra Pradesh.
As the daylight faded and more villagers gathered around, Shyam continued narrating the past while advocating for the mass surrender of Naxalites.
“It would be good for them to lay down their arms; otherwise, mindless killings will continue, and society will not change.”
Shyam seemed less optimistic about the current dispensation and said that there should be a change at the helm every few years to bring in fresh faces.
“Chief minister Nitish Kumar has done some development in the state, but he is surrounded by people who are corrupt, musclemen, and ruffians. I do not think that the new party of Prashant Kishor will also be able to do much. But there should be a change,” he said.
Arvind Kumar, 24, a graduate, was among the younger faces who recalled the times then and the situation now.
“We were not able to celebrate Independence Day and Republic Day until around six years ago. No function was held even at the school here as the Naxals would put up a black flag there. That situation has changed now. A police station and a security camp have been established nearby,” Arvind said.
The residents are expecting the upcoming polls to be their second such “normal” voting exercise since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
For decades, conducting the polls and voting under the shadow of guns was an ordeal for everybody in the area.
The Left-wing extremists would call for boycotting the polls, the security forces would deter outsiders from venturing in, the polling booths would be declared hyper-sensitive, and voting would be wrapped up by 3 pm to provide the election personnel a chance to safely exit from the territory.
This time, the Election Commission (EC) has decided that voting at 36 booths in Barachatti, including the one at the village, would be held from 7 am to 4 pm, as against 7 am to 6 pm elsewhere.
Incidentally, the Naxals had blown up a part of the government higher secondary school at the village because it served as a polling station and housed security forces during the elections.
The piles of bricks and concrete the blast left acted as a stark reminder of the Naxal terror and struck fear into the local populace.
Amid this, a discussion on development or a better future post elections naturally weaves with it the Naxal threat and the unfulfilled promises by the politicians.
While much has been done to neutralise the threat, a village that remained the hotbed of the ultras knows that trouble might still be around the corner.
“They (Naxals) are still there in the hills. We do not know what they are thinking or doing, but they are there. We never ask them anything, nor are we interested in their activities,” said Tulsi Sao, an elderly resident.
Lakhmini Devi, who manages both the kitchen and the field, recalled how hordes of Naxals would often come to the village and demand food. “Every household would cook for one person (Naxalite) each. They used to eat and go away. At times, they also took away people suspected of being police informers or any other wrongdoing,” she said.
Neither Tulsi nor Lakhmini were excited about the upcoming Assembly polls.
“We will vote if we get an opportunity, but we are not really interested. We do not get anything out of it. Our MLA has not visited this village even once in the last five years,” Tulsi said.
“No Vidhayak (MLA) has come here since the last elections. They asked for a vote, we voted, and that was it,” said a villager, with a grin on his face, as ETV Bharat asked him about the development work or the lack of it and his thoughts on the upcoming elections.
The Barachatti Assembly constituency, in which the village falls, is reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC). Jyoti Devi of Hindutani Awam Morcha (Secular) or HAM(S) is the incumbent MLA. She is a relative of party founder and Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, and is contesting this time as well as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate.
In response to the allegations by the villagers that she never visited them, Jyoti said: "I have been in that area many times to attend programmes. I have 'bade sahab' (Jitan Ram Manjhi) also there. I have also attended some functions at Dhangai after being invited by them. The reality is that some people will always find fault despite all the good work I have been doing in my area."
Talking about Naxals, the incumbent legislator asserted that their days were over and "they have been finished."
Jyoti said she would focus on improving the basic infrastructure facilities, including roads and small bridges in the constituency, if she wins the election.
Officially, Bihar has no Naxal-affected district as designated by the Ministry of Home Affairs. However, the police are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the Assembly Elections are properly held in Gaya and other Naxal-affected districts.
Magadh Range inspector general (IG) Kshatranil Singh, under whose jurisdiction Gaya, Nawada, Aurangabad, Jehanabad and Arwal fall, said that the preparations are broadly on similar lines as done in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“Additional polling booths have been formed this time, and voters of many villages will not have to commute to far-flung locations to cast their votes,” Kshatranil said.
“There has been no Naxal violence recently, but we are not taking any chances. Two companies of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) have been stationed in every Assembly constituency, including Barachatti. They are apart from the in-situ forces already available, and are conducting flag marches to instil confidence among the common people,” Kshatranil added.
For Dhangai, the mood ahead of the elections is as sleepy as the village. The memories of the past continue to haunt, and any promise of development seems far-fetched. The villagers would do everything to remove the tag of being a Naxalite hotbed. They would vote. Choose their leaders. Pin hopes. And then pray that for once, the hopes turn into a reality.
