The Bhagalpur way of justice

The first incident of a mob beating up a man,accusing him of kidnapping children,was reported from Kahalgaon on June 11. After several cases of similar beatings,the first death reported was of a 35-year-old unidentified man,found “loitering” near a school,who was lynched at Lodhipur,20 km from Bhagalpur town,on July 5. The local police station is barely 4 km from

the spot.

Two days later,two unidentified men between the ages of 35 and 40 were beaten to death at two different places near Bhagalpur,at the Akbarnagar Railway Station and in Kharaiya village.

The three women who were accused of being members of a child-lifting gang and beaten up by a mob in Burari on July 6 — Quresha Khatoon,Ajima Khatun and Saibul Khatoon — say they were just asking for an address when people set upon them. The police arrived in time and they got saved.

Saibul and Ajima suffered abdominal injuries and have been advised regular medical follow-ups for six months.

Another woman,Usha Mitra,was beaten up in the Bhagalpur Railway Colony on July 8,after she had seen her domestic help to a train and was returning home. “As I took a short cut (near the railway station),people started looking at me suspiciously. Before I could say anything,they started punching me in my face. I fainted and later found myself in a hospital,” Mitra says. Her family has lodged a case with Government Railway Police (GRP),Bhagalpur.

The Bhagalpur police say they have little to go on except “video footage” of the incidents,captured by locals. Admitting their helplessness,Bihar Police spokesperson and Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) P K Thakur says: “We may resort to extreme options of imposing community fine if such incidents do not stop.”

They were trying to educate people that no child-lifter gang has been operative in Bhagalpur or adjoining districts,he added.

However,cases of mob justice can be notoriously hard to solve. Even in the 1979-81 Bhagalpur blinding cases,the scores of citizens who are believed to have helped police carry out ‘Operation Gangajal (blinding by puncturing eyes with spokes and putting acid in them)’ could never be identified. The case finally ended with conviction of just four policemen.

Even in the 2006 case of police dragging a suspected chain-snatcher attached to their bike,that made it to national headlines,two policemen were suspended,only to be reinstated after a few months.

Senior advocate Ram Kumar Mishra,who first brought up the Bhagalpur blinding case,making it a national issue,says: “The police making light of such cases and not being able to rein in rumours through effective community policing are responsible for the recurrent cases of mob justice. When so little justice was done in the Bhagalpur blinding case,what can one expect from them?”