Saturday, February 23, 2008 (Hajipur)
Bihar once again witnessed mob justice as public anger let loose just outside the Hajipur Sadar Hospital in the state.On Saturday morning, Ravi Kumar, a student, killed his friend and roommate Om Prakash, whom he accused of stealing his mobile phone. Soon, he was dragged out of hospital and mercilessly beaten up by a group of people. The police intervened and brought Ravi Kumar to hospital for first aid. But as the word spread that his friend had died, the mob dragged Ravi Kumar out of the hospital after which it was a free-for-all. The five policemen present at the hospital, who just stood by, have been suspended.''An FIR has been registered. We will take action against whoever is involved in the incident,'' said Arvind Pandey, DIG, Tirhut Range.Bihar has seen almost a dozen cases of mob vigilantism in the past six months. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's declaration that mobs taking the law into their own hands would face collective fines seems to have changed little. Bihar's crime graph has fallen and speedy trials have resulted in rising convictions.Yet, public confidence in law-enforcing agencies seems suspect.''The common man feels that the police is not doing its job so their confidence in the police is finished,'' said the DIG.The law may be catching up with the mob of Bihar's musclemen politicians, but for petty crimes and disputes, people in the state prefer to take the law into their own hands. Reacting to the mob fury in Hajipur, President Pratibha Patil, at a conference of Bar Associations in New Delhi, said that the increase in cases of mob violence was due to failure of the justice delivery system.