While Bihar’s Nitish Kumar-led government counts public safety as its top priority, some of its embarrassments have sprung, ironically, from the recent action of police officials with a penchant for taking the law too much into their own hands.
After the widely-criticised incident of the SP of Patna slapping an elderly woman in public without any provocation in February, for which the CM had to apologise in the state Assembly, the SP of Aurangabad has been accused of firing at an engineer following a contentious disagreement over the construction of police station buildings.
An engineers’ organisation in Bihar on Friday threatened to begin a state-wide agitation unless strong action was taken against Aurangabad SP Siddharth Mohan Jain, who allegedly fired at Deo Nayar, a junior engineer of the Bihar Police Building Construction Corporation (BPBCC). According to Mr Nayar’s written complaint, the SP snatched the service revolver of a DSP standing near him and fired at him (Nayar) on April 4 after inspecting a building under construction.
While Mr Jain denied Mr Nayar’s allegations and said he had perhaps lost his mental balance, what has come as particularly worrying is Mr Nayar’s allegation that Mr Jain had also threatened him in the past. Mr Nayar said he survived the firing because Mr Jain barely missed the target and the bullet just whizzed past his ear.
“The charges are absolutely baseless. I had only reprimanded him for the use of sub-standard materials in the construction of the police stations,” said Mr Jain.