Patna: Violence erupted in Bihar on Monday a day after the head of a school was lynched and the school building set on fire by an angry mob protesting the death of two students who were enrolled in the school.
The lynching took place late Sunday evening at Nirpur village in central Bihar Nalanda district which also happens to be the hoe district of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar.
Angry at the lynching incident, the furious villagers on Monday disrupted road and rail traffic, clashed with the police and pelted stones on the vehicles of senior police and administrative officials, damaging them badly. They are demanding stern action against the mob which killed the school director Devendra Prasad Sinha (DPS). The school ran by the acronym ‘DPS’ but was in fact a decrepit structure totally unconnected with a well-known school chain with the same acronym.
The mob comprising the local villagers had gone on the rampage on Sunday shortly after the bodies of two students aged seven and eleven were recovered from a water-filled ditch near the residential school in the morning as they suspected the involvement of schoolteachers in the incident.
Witnesses said the mob raided the school and dragged the school director to the streets before beating and kicking him for hours. Reports said the villagers took turn to assault the school director even as the police looked on helplessly.
Live TV footages showed the mob holding huge bamboo logs in their hands and ruthlessly raining blows on him ignoring his appeals for mercy. The mob also allegedly damaged his left eye before lynching. By the time he was rescued, he had also succumbed to grievous injuries.
“We have identified eight accused persons so far after watching the footages and are conducting raids to nab them,” the additional director generation of police, Patna, Sunil Kumar told the media on Monday. The state government has also placed under suspension a local police office under whose jurisdiction the incident took place.
Strangely, the autopsy report today confirmed the both the school kids dies from drowning in the water-filled ditch, and not by assaults as the villagers had suspected. The autopsy reports also found no external injuries on the bodies of the deceased students whose death sparked violence.
“It appears the students had gone outside to meet the nature’s call but slipped into the water pond just outside the school and drowned,” the local Nalanda district superintendent of police Siddharth Kumar Jain said.
However, the victims’ family members have refused to buy the police theory. “My child has been killed,” alleged Manohar Prasad, father of one of the two deceased students Ravi Kumar who was enrolled in class four. Prasad had admitted his child to the school with the hope to make him a doctor but his wish perished midway.
Bihar’s director general of police (DGP) PK Thakur said the police have registered cases against both the incidents and are busy investigating them thoroughly. “None involved in the incident will be spared,” the DGP declared.
