Bihar’s Nitish Kumar-led government on Thursday faced a barrage of criticism for violent police excesses on women and children from the weaker sections in the chief minister’s home district of Nalanda even as four constables were suspended and a probe was ordered.
About a dozen policemen chased and rained lathis on unarmed women at Noorserai on Wednesday during their protests against police inaction and alleged collusion in the disappearance of a local woman. The policemen allegedly continued attacking the women even after the protests, dragging some out of their homes in the evening. About 25 women were hospitalised with injuries.
The incident, aired on local TV channels, gave the Opposition parties a fresh handle to beat the government three months after the police firing on poor Muslims in Forbesganj led to the death of five people and injury to over a dozen. The Nalanda incident was criticised by even some ruling alliance leaders and attracted a notice from the Bihar Human Rights Commission to DGP Abhayanand.
RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav described the incident as “yet another example of the police atrocities on Bihar’s poor, dalit and women in Nitish raj”. LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan met President Pratibha Patil in Delhi and urged her to recommend action against the Bihar government. Leaders of the CPI(ML) and RJD visited the injured women at the hospital.
Since the women were attacked in the presence of DIG (Magadh range) Vineet Vinayak and Nalanda SP Jitendra Rana, RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who is leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, demanded action against senior police officials. The DIG and the SP had reached the Noorserai police station to conduct an inquiry into complaints that Reena Devi alias Sushma Kumari, the panchayat secretary of Chandasi village, had been missing since August 24. Her husband Rambalak Prasad, a school night guard, had earlier blamed Ashok Singh, an ASI of the police station, for the disappearance.