Sudhakar Singh

Both camps approached the July 30 bypolls differently but left no stone unturned to ensure victory for their respective candidates – Kishor of the JSP and Neeraj Kumar Sinha of the BJP. As Bankipur witnessed one of Bihar’s most closely watched bypolls in recent years — the results will be announced on Monday along with Datia in Madhya Pradesh and Manjalpur in Gujarat — the real contest was not confined to campaign stages.

“The most dangerous thing in the world,” Ted Bundy, the infamous American serial killer, is often quoted as saying, “is a man who doesn’t seem dangerous at all.” Truman Capote understood something of this paradox when he opened In Cold Blood with a landscape instead of the murderer: “the village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there’.” The most haunting crime narratives begin with the world that produced fear around them.