ON NH 2 IN BARACHATTI,BIHAR, december 10 No one took Satyendra Dubey seriously when he blew the whistle on the goings-on along the Aurangabad-Barachatti stretch of the Golden Quadrilateral. He paid for it with his life. But now when Hem Chand Sirohi tells you ‘‘no one is safe, the mafia will have its way,’’ take him seriously. Because he is the Gaya Divisional Commissioner, the place where they killed Dubey.

The murdered NHAI official’s memory hangs in the air. So does fear. At camp sites, in offices, it’s sinking in, the refrain is clear: ‘‘The mafia rules.’’ That’s why when the top administrative brass appears before the Patna High Court tomorrow—it’s hearing a PIL on the Dubey murder based on The Indian Express reports—it will have a lot of explaining to do.

Gammon India project manager N H Srikumar, who oversees the work at Sherghati, says: ‘‘We are scared to venture out after 4 pm, let alone work after dusk. Work that was picking up is going to suffer.’’ Srikumar remembers Dubey, having met him a number of times after taking charge of the section.

Sirohi too says ‘‘the mafia will have its way.’’ He remembers meeting Dubey at a meeting of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Behind the banners of big joint venture companies on this highway are scores of small, sub-contractor firms, believed to be fronts for the local mafia and whose manpower resources or quality concerns are quite suspect. Engineers, consultants and even government officials admit that Dubey’s killing shows it is this contractor mafia and their men who call the shots.

A senior engineer — he works for a well-known contractor that’s a JV partner on the Amas-Barachatti section — has figured out that the best way to survive is to make influential friends. ‘‘It’s better to have a sher (lion) with you. He can keep the small rats away,’’ he says.

The ‘‘rats’’ he talks about are small-time mafia contractors, always sniffing for their share of the booty. The sher in this case is influential don and MLA Suraj Bhan, currently behind bars. A firm owned by his relatives has been given sub-contracts for various jobs—mostly supply of equipment, personnel and labour.

If the JV partner, for instance, needs men to work its crusher, it turns to the sub-contractor. The same with a crane or a dumper loader operator. The engineer tries to tell you that ‘‘the mafia concept is undergoing a change, this one does a thorough professional job... gone are the days of those dhoti-clad road contractors.’’

But even before he can finish, the ‘‘small rats’’ he mentioned earlier barge in. They are actually two, nearly six-feet-tall youths in their 30s, who park themselves on chairs and confront the engineer: ‘‘Saab, till date payment for 73 trucks of sand is pending. What do you expect us to do? Starve? Stop supplies? Stop work? Yeh, bahut galat baat (this is very wrong).’’ The engineer manages to persuade them to come next morning and sort out things.

At Dhubi crossing, the proprietor of yet another small contractor firm from Arrah is busy trying to mobilise men and machinery for work on a 100-metre-long bridge. Further down near Kahudag-Barachatti, there are other such small firms in operation.

The only challenge to the mafia groups on this stretch is the MCC. Work on 60 km between Madanpur and Kahudag came to a standstill in January this year after alleged MCC cadres raided the camp office and took away nearly 25 personnel, including the project manager. A plant was destroyed and offices ransacked. Work resumed only in September after the Bihar government provided a permanent security set-up at the camp office.