ON ONE of the biggest festivals of the Hindu year, a time for family and friends, doctor Purnendu Ojha sits alone, locked behind the heavy iron gates of a children?s clinic in a shabby north Indian city.

There is no colour, no celebration here. Instead, visitors are greeted with undisguised suspicion; checked and double-checked before being allowed in. ?Everything is locked. I have no social visits, no happiness. I have sent my children outside the state.Without family, there?s no life at all.?

Ojha is a lucky man. He?s still alive. India?s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is campaigning heavily on the good life and a booming economy in its bid for re-election in April-May polls.

But in India?s ?wild west? state of Bihar, the only thing booming is the business of kidnap and murder, a symbol of the rampant lawlessness threatening local and foreign businesses. ?It?s the only industry that?s flourishing?, says a local journalist, too frightened to be named. And doctors, vulnerable and relatively well-off, are a prime target.

Thirty-eight-year-old Ojha, one of the top paediatric surgeons in Bihar?s capital, Patna, was dragged away by armed men as he left a private clinic for home, 500 metres away, one evening in September, 2001. ?For the first two days, they treated me very nicely, but not like a 5-star hotel After that, they were harrassing me, they were panicked. Every moment, every second, I was scared. I was afraid they would kill me.?

Soft target

Ojha, whose brother is one of Bihar?s top policemen, was released unharmed after four or five days. No one ever admits paying a ransom in Bihar, but Ojha?s kidnappers originally sought up to 10 million rupees ($220,000). ?Doctors are a very soft target. We are very exposed, very vulnerable. Everyone knows us.Since it happened, the sense of insecurity, the shakiness, the uncertainty, is always there. My sons were emotionally traumatised and they are always saying Papa don?t go alone, don?t move.?

Scores of doctors, other professionals and even impoverished farmers are kidnapped every month across Bihar, home to about 85 million people, roughly the population of Germany. There is a parallel trade in extortion. Crime gangs offer protection against kidnapping but only by themselves, not by other gangs. Those who refuse the insurance are often murdered.

Many doctors and business people have fled Bihar. The state branch of the medical association has urged doctors to carry guns, some move around only with armed guards and most run checks on new patients before they see them.

Bihar?s national notoriety as India?s crime capital was recently back in the headlines when a young and promising engineer, Satyendra Dubey, was executed after a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee warning about unbridled corruption on a major national highways project was leaked.

There were 230,000 violent crimes reported nationally in 2001, the last year for which figures are available, but tens of thousands more are never reported: even in the capital New Delhi, police discourage victims from filing a complaint, or refuse even to accept one, to keep the statistics down.

In New Delhi, a Swiss diplomat was raped at the venue of a film festival in October and on Wednesday the strangled body of a 59-year-old Australian woman was found near the runway of the international airport hours after she arrived.

But crime is not an issue in this election campaign. The BJP is focusing on the economic boom and what it calls the accompanying feel-good factor and the main opposition Congress party is focusing on whether the boom is sustainable.

It remains a real threat to millions of Indians and to foreign business people here, who must navigate their way through a gauntlet of crime, corruption and intimidation.

An Australian and several Malaysians were recently held hostage for several hours by gun-toting thugs seeking money for local contractors in Bhopal, the capital of central Madhya Pradesh state.

After convincing the hoods they had no money, the foreigners fled to the airport and caught the next flight out, leaving behind their belongings in their hotel room. And another businessman tells of one of India?s biggest conglomerates sending guard dogs after a colleague as a negociating tactic.

Terry Friel