Portal:Jharkhand/Selected biography/4

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Shibu Soren (born 11 January 1944) was an Indian Criminal MP and was until recently a member of the 14th Lok Sabha of India. He represented the Dumka constituency of Jharkhand and is the president of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) political party.

He was the Minister for Coal in the Manmohan Singh cabinet in November 2006, when a Delhi court found him guilty in the killing of his private secretary Shashi Nath Jha in 1994. He is also charged with a number of other murders, and also other criminal charges, relating to a bribery deal with the Congress to save the Narasimha Rao government in a no-confidence motion in July 1993. He is the first Union Minister of the Government of India to be found guilty of the charge of murder.

He was born in Nemra village of Hazaribagh district, Jharkhand States and territories of India. He completed his schooling from the same district. After schooling, he got married and decided to work with his father who was a farmer. He has three sons and a daughter.

He started his political career in the early 1970s and rose to become a tribal leader. On 23 January 1975, he allegedly led a mob that attacked the Muslim-dominated Chirudih village in Jamtara district in a campaign to drive away "outsiders", a term used to describe non-tribals. Ten people including nine Muslims were killed in the attack. Along with sixty eight others, he was charged for murder. He lost his first Lok Sabha election in 1977. He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980. In 1986, an arrest warrant was issued against him. He was subsequently elected to the Lok Sabha in 1989, 1991 and 1996 as well. In 2002, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha with the help of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He won the Dumka Lok Sabha seat in a by-election the same year and resigned his Rajya Sabha seat. He was re-elected in 2004.

He became the Union Coal Minister in the Manmohan Singh government (2004–2009), but was asked to resign following an arrest warrant in his name in a thirty year old case of killing 11 people in Chirrudih. After the warrant was issued, he initially went underground. He resigned on 24 July 2004. He is a member of the Lok Sabha representing Dumka, Jharkhand elected for the sixth time to the Lok Sabha in 2004. He was re-inducted into the Union Cabinet and given back the coal ministry on 27 November 2004.

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