Bihar has once again earned the dubious distinction of being the most lawless state with over 903 people reported kidnapped in the first three months of 2007.
PATNA: Bihar has once again earned the dubious distinction of being the most lawless state in the country with over 903 people reported kidnapped in the first three months of 2007.
MP Gupta, a senior lawyer of Patna High Court, quoted a court report as saying that 90 cases of abductions took place in Bihar from January 1 to March 31. In January, there were 333 kidnappings, 361 in February and 209 in March, indicating that little has changed since the new government came to power in the state in 2005.
“The figures are authentic and based on reports submitted by district judges to the high court,” said Gupta, who is also general secretary of the Council for Protection of Public Rights and Welfare, which files crime-related PILs. Gupta added that the Patna High Court had asked district judges to submit monthly reports on the abductions because it doubted the authenticity of the figures provided by the Bihar government.
According to officials, over 2,000 people were kidnapped in 2006, with lawyers, doctors, contractors, businessmen and schoolchildren being the prime targets. In fact, hundreds of professionals migrated to bigger cities or have sent their children to boarding schools outside the state.
In the wake of a series of abductions of schoolchildren in the state, more and more people are questioning Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s claim of providing better governance.
When Nitish Kumar assumed power in November 2005, he had promised to turn Bihar into a crime-free state in three months. In fact, when Rabri Devi was the chief minister of the state , the opposition had made the poor law and order situation in the state a major issue. Clearly, Bihar has not changed much since then.
Gupta said 14,276 abduction cases were pending in various courts across the state. He claimed that nearly 5,000 criminals involved in abduction cases had not been arrested.
Earlier this year, the Patna HC had directed the government to trace 144 children and 581 women reported missing since 2001. The court took a serious note of the reports that 44 of the abducted children had been killed. The court had expressed concern over the police failure in finding the missing children and asked the government to submit a report within six weeks.
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