Bihar minister Anil Kumar was on Wednesday accused of causing the death of a four-year-old girl by drunken and rash driving
GAYA: Bihar minister Anil Kumar was on Wednesday accused of causing the death of a four-year-old girl by drunken and rash driving here by the victim's family but he denied the charge and demanded a thorough probe into the incident.
According to an FIR lodged by the officer in-charge of Tekari police station Ram Bhajan Chaudhary based on the statements of eyewitnesses, Sweety Kumari was crushed to death by an "unidentified beacon-fitted" car near Mahimapur village on Tekari-Alipur road last evening.
The FIR was lodged under sections 279 (rash driving or riding on a public way) and 304(a) (causing death by negligence).
The victim's father Dilip Yadav, however, alleged that Anil Kumar, who is Minister of State for Information and Technology in Nitish Kumar Government, was driving the vehicle in an inebriated state and ran over his daughter.
"Her (Sweety's) father made a statement today accusing the minister of driving his Scorpio jeep in inebriated state leading to the death of her daughter and demanded a
compensation of Rs five lakh," Deputy Superintendent of Police, Tekari, Harishanker Kumar said.
The statement of girl's father has been tagged to the FIR, he said.
Denying the hit-and-run charge, the Minister, however, claimed that he had passed the area hour-and-a-half before the accident and accused the family of falsely implicating him in the case at the behest of his political rivals.
Shiv Bachan Yadav, former RJD MLA from Koch, the constituency now represented by Anil Kumar, along with scores of local people blocked the Tekari-Alipur road with the body of the child for more than nine hour last evening, demanding arrest of the minister and adequate compensation for the family.
The protesters refused to hand over the body of the girl for postmortem and insisted on burying her without going through the required process, DSP Harishanker Kumar said.
After great persuasion, the police was allowed to take the body for autopsy, he said.
The Minister denied any involvement in the accident and claimed that he was being framed by his political rivals.
"I never drive myself when touring my constituency... he talk of my drunken driving is utter rubbish and an attempt o malign me," Anil Kumar said.
The minister said he had gone to the area last evening along with former Lok Sabha member from neighbouring Aurangabad Sushil Kumar Singh at Kespa village.
"I crossed the place around 6 PM, a full hour-and-a-half after the accident reportedly took place. I found no no protesters and came to know of the tragedy on my reaching
Gaya," he said, claiming the "contradiction" in the description of the vehicle in the FIR and the statement of the girl's father was self-explanatory.
"Being an old rival, Shiv Bachan Yadav is trying to sully my image and is pressuring the victim's family to falsely implicate me in the case....the truth will come out during the probe," he said.
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