Bettiah Raj - Present Condition

Present Condition

The present condition of Raj properties is pathetic, with the royal garden Named Nazar Bagh having been turned into garbage dumping ground, and even the palace and its land have become the hunting ground of all sorts of greedy elements.

Except for the Bettiah Raj, other estates had clear lines of succession. Consequently, the Bettiah Raj came under the ‘court of wards’, and this mammoth estate became the object of accumulation and greed, earlier by the pre-Independence administrators and later by our indigenous governing elites. Bipin Biharee Verma, the manager of Bettiah Raj, who scripted most of the primitive accumulation and leakage, was said to have had direct patronage from a very prestigious address in Delhi.

Criminals such as Bhagar Yadav who was on the run for three decades; ultimately surrendered before the Superintendent of Police of Bihar’s West Champaran District, K.S. Anupam in May 2008, reflecting improving "law and order" and return of the state in Bihar. He started his career as a cattle guard from the Udaipur jungle, where he finetuned his kidnapping skill. Over the years, he diversified his accumulation, apart from eyeing the left-overs of the Bettiah Raj. He is said to now control the cultivation of about 10,000 acres (40 km2) of diara land, ghats, contracts and levies on the incoming and outgoing goods of the region.