Abductions and train robberies have returned to haunt Bihar again after a brief lull and fresh questions are being raised about the state government’s insistence that the law and order situation has improved well enough to present a fearless atmosphere. The murder of an abducted 15-year-old Patna schoolboy and the discovery of the skeleton of an abducted businessman from Lakhiserai district last week are the latest in a series of disturbing crimes in recent months. Train robberies, generally rampant in Bihar but in control in the past few months, staged a comeback with as many as three incidents last week, one of them carried out allegedly by a police escort party of the Government Railway Police (GRP).
Class 10 student Aditya Kumar, the only son of district agriculture officer Shailendra Kumar, was abducted on Wednesday evening and his family received phone calls demanding a ransom of `75 lakh for his safe release. Despite a few reported raids by Patna police, the boy’s body was found inside a well on the outskirts of Patna. Five youths aged between 19 and 25, who allegedly killed the boy the very day they abducted him, were arrested. This was the fifth major incident of a schoolboy’s murder in the past nine months.
The police in Lakhiserai district stepped up efforts to trace missing businessman Mahesh Nirala only after his wife, Sita Devi, sat in a four-day hunger strike in front of the district magistrate’s office. Nirala was allegedly abducted in June. His skeleton was found in a railway quarter in Beguserai district and a couple was arrested in this connection.
On Sunday, the police in Nawada district rescued an abducted man from a forest area near Rajgir.