Bihar ready to write off loans to Bhagalpur riot victims

Eleven years after the Bhagalpur riots in Bihar — in which 1,891 people were killed — the state government has decided to send a p...

Eleven years after the Bhagalpur riots in Bihar — in which 1,891 people were killed — the state government has decided to send a proposal to the Centre to write off the loans riot victims were given at the time.

The decision comes as reply to a question raised in Parliament in March. In a meeting between bank and state government representatives yesterday, it was decided that the loans — ranging from Rs 12,000 to 15,000 to each of the 843 victims a year after the riots — should be written off.

In the intervening period, however, arrest warrants were issued against 12 riot victims because of their inability to pay the loans and certificate cases were registered against many others.

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‘‘These people were all living in abject poverty during the riots. The families were destabilised with their wage-earners dead. They thought this was part of relief measures — that the loans were actually ex-gratia payments — from the government.

In the course of time, they could neither repay nor gain economic independence,’’ said secretary of the Department of Institutional Finance and Programme Implementation and a participant in the meeting Dr M.A. Ibrahimi. ‘‘Banks always want their money back,’’ he said.

The State Bank of India, UCO Bank and Punjab National Bank had given out the loans. Over the years, the interest outstripped the actual amount, Ibrahimi said. The loan amounted to Rs 1.16 crore but the interest had jumped up to Rs 1.7 crore. The total amount came up to Rs 2.33 crore.

‘‘Keeping in mind that these were small loans and that in other riot cases also, the loans were waived, we decided to write off the amount,’’ he added. Even now the matter was taken up not on the state’s initiative but because of a parliamentary question raised by MP from Bhagalpur, Subodh Roy.