what ails bhagalpur!

Patna, August 29

On Monday last, policemen thrashed and dragged a petty thief — tied to a motorcycle and already beaten to pulp by an irate mob — for snatching a gold chain.

A couple of months back, a private tutor shoved his pen into the eyes of his 11-year-old student for making some mistakes.

In January, miscreants stuffed the mouth of a 7-year-old boy with cloth, tied his limbs with a rope and fed him to rats.

In December, the right hand of a 10-year-old Dalit girl of Phulwaria village was injured with a sickle for plucking a few leaves of spinach.

Prior to this, two persons had their eyes gauged out for petty offences

MORE THAN 25 years after the Bhagalpur police blinded 31 undertrials in 1979-80, a spate of spine-chilling incidents, reported during the past few months, has thrown up a vital question. Is there something wrong with the city? Experts in criminal psychology and psychiatrists — this reporter spoke to — term the phenomenon as ‘disturbing.’
Senior IPS officer and Rohtas SP N.H. Khan says the issue is ‘delicate and very serious.’ He says, “Corrective measures should immediately be taken but not only in the context of law, as it’s more of a social issue.
He admits that the style of investigation in Bihar is not very advanced and cops were not trained, or sensitive enough, to tackle such cases. Referring to an incident in which a couple was tied together with iron wire and burnt alive at Sasaram in December, he says, “Such cases need to be treated separately.”
But why this sudden spurt? Another IPS officer and Buxar SP Paresh Saxena explains, “Our social structure is getting complex and so is the pattern of crime.” Saxena, who is also a doctor, says, “It’s very difficult to generalize, or for that matter, theorize such cases.” He feels that the behaviour of children — till they become criminals — has to be followed in a truly scientific manner.
The National Institute of Criminology (NIC), New Delhi, has taken up a pilot project where a large number of such samples are being analysed. Saxena says, “It may take a lot of time but in order to avoid erroneous inference, something of that sort has to be done here in Bihar also.”
Dr B.K. Singh, patron, Indian Psychiatry Association (Bihar chapter), termed the recent spurt of such incidents in Bhgalpur as alarming and attributed the same to certain social conditions and lack of parental guidance and control. He said, “Tackling such crimes, which are primarily expressions of suppressed feelings, is much more challenging as some people do it just to derive sadistic pleasure.”
Incidentally, when a movie based on the Bhagalpur blindings was made a few years back, similar incidents were again reported in an around Bhagalpur. According to police records, soon after the release, while an alleged ox thief was beaten up and acid poured into his eyes in Banka, a 16-year-old boy of Khagaria district, accused of stealing a bicycle, was thrashed by a mob which gouged out one of his eyes while damaging the other one.
Kumar Vivek an AIIMS graduate currently pursuing higher studies in Philadelphia, thinks such trends do not auger well for society in general. Talking to this reporter over phone on Wednesday, he says, “Failure of the administration to check crime or punish criminals does not give us the right to take law in our hands. The problem has more to do with people’s psychology.”
But do the infamous bindings have anything to do with the recent spurt in such acts? Says Khan, “Influence of the blindings on the psyche of those resorting to such acts cannot be ruled out. It shows there’s something wrong in the social system.” Echoing similar views, Saxena, who himself investigated a recent blinding of a student by his teacher in Buxar, says if such cases are premeditated, then it’s a cause for great concern.”