Brij Behari Prasad

Brij Behari Prasad, also spelled Brij Bihari Prasad, was a minister in the Government of Bihar, India. A member of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), he was murdered on 13 June 1998. Brij Behari Prasad had become Minister for Science and Technology in the Indian state of Bihar, where he represented the RJD. He had been arrested for alleged involvement in corrupt admissions to technical institutes and was murdered on 13 June 1998 while being treated at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences in Patna, where he was undergoing treatment while in custody. It was claimed that his death was in retribution for those of Chhottan Shukla and five other people, who had been killed on 4 December 1994 when on their way home from campaigning for the Bihar Legislative Assembly elections that were to take place in 1995.

The politics of Bihar has for many years been influenced by caste divisions and riven with violence. Shifts in power, especially since 1990, have seen a rise in left-wing influence centred on traditionally lower-caste interests and have reduced traditionally powerful Rajputs and other landowning communities into a subordinate position. Shukla was a gangster from the Bhumihar community, which was one of the newly disaffected castes, whereas Prasad was a Bania and thus a member of an Other Backward Class that was in the ascendancy. Supporters of Prasad were thought to have been responsible for the killing of Shukla.