government. This period saw the rise of strongmen from both upper and backward castes. The Yadav-Rabri administration was not supported by Forward Castes due to their political and socio-economic marginalisation under Yadav's rule. A number of influential criminals, who were portrayed as leaders of their castes, entered politics as a reaction against Yadav's "backward caste politics". People like Vijay Kumar Shukla (Munna Shukla), Anand Mohan Singh, Rama Singh and Prabhunath Singh supported the upper castes by launching retribution against lower and middle castes. In Vaishali district, for example, Munna Shukla and his associates consistently clashed with Yadav's minister Brij Bihari Prasad, a Bania, resulting in assassination of Chhotan Shukla, Munna's brother and associate, in the retribution of which Prasad was also killed. Anand Mohan also brought havoc to the supporters of a Reservation and Mandal Commission report by forming his "Samajwadi Krantikari Sena", which was a lynching party of upper castes until it was taken over by Yadav's close confidante Pappu Yadav. Munna Shukla and Anand Mohan were convicted of the murder of Gopalganj District Magistrate, G. Krishnaiah, a Dalit. Lalu Yadav's brothers-in-law Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Prasad Yadav, were also running parallel governments in their own areas of influence. Devi was not able to cope with the situation, nor with the flourishing private armies of the landlords, which had existed since the 1960s. In retaliation, the landless labourers and the poor middle-caste peasantry began their own organisations, such as Lal Sena and the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation. A number of big massacres had also taken place in the decades before Yadav's and Rabri's administrations. In the Dalelchak-bhagora massacre, during Bindeshwari Dubey's government, 42 Rajputs were killed by the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), one of Yadav caste's lynching parties. The MCC also committed the Senari carnage, in which Bhumihars were victimised. Large numbers of Dalits were also killed by the upper castes, in the Laxmanpur Bathe massacre. In the Nawada region, the Ashok Mahto gang formed by Koeri and Kurmis, was in a drawn-out battle with the "Akhilesh Singh gang" of Bhumihars. The Mahto gang killed Akhilesh Singh's father-in-law and a number of his family members, causing a severe blow to the ambitions of the Akhilesh Singh gang that was poised to take control of the rural area. The root cause of these skirmishes was attempts to grab land in the wake of the deteriorating economy and administration: