Patna:
Rupam Pathak met the man she stabbed at his house in Bihar when she moved from Imphal to Purnea as the principal of a new private school. Raj Kishore Kesari, the BJP MLA for the area, inaugurated her school.
Three years later, Pathak smuggled a kitchen knife into a
janta durbar at Kesri's residence. Kesri had just been re-elected for a fourth time. He died on Tuesday minutes after Rupam attacked him. She was in turn assaulted by people at the darbar, and is now in hospital.
Rupam's recent past has been turbulent. She was by now estranged from her husband, a teacher who had moved to Imphal with their two children. In June last year, she filed a police case accusing Kesari of raping her in 2007. She later retracted that statement in court.
The police say that in September 2010, Rupam went back to court, declaring that she had withdrawn her case against Kesari under pressure from her in-laws and other. She did not state who the others might include.
"We did investigate whether she was under pressure to withdraw the case. There could have been some pressure, but there is nothing to suggest the MLA was pressuring her," said Amit Kumar, the Deputy Inspector General of Purnea Range, Bihar Police.
Rupam's brother-in-law says the family did not discuss her case against the MLA.
"We have not even spoken to her since 2006. She lived separately," said her brother-in-law, Vinod Pathak.
Sushi Kumar Modi, who is the Deputy chief Minister of Bihar, suggested that Rupam killed his partyman after her efforts to blackmail him did not succeed. That's not a credible charge according to the police.
"There is nothing to suggest this. The MLA also never mentioned it to us. Call records prove that they were talking to each other. But we don't have any proof of blackmail," says Kumar.