Patna: Bihar authorities have suspended around a dozen policemen after a minor Dalit boy was implicated in a motorcycle robbery case and then sent to jail for refusing to give vegetables for free to the local cops. Not only that, the entire policemen posted with a police station in Patna, the capital of Bihar state, have been removed from duty.

“A total of 11 policemen have been placed under suspension, while an additional superintendent of police (ASP) has been asked to reply why similar action should not be taken against him,” a senior police official told the media. ASP Harimohan Shukla too is accused of conspiring with the other cops against the minor boy, Pankaj Kumar, who has been languishing in jail for the past three months for no faults of his.

The action against the erring cops follows after Patna’s inspector general of police Nair Hasnain Khan conducted a thorough probe into the matter following instructions from the state’s Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who asked him to submit the report within two days. Khan submitted the report to the government on Monday.

“The charges under which the boy was arrested and sent to jail have been found to be fake,” Khan was quoted as telling a local media on Monday. The victim was arrested on the fictitious charges of bike robbery by the police who later sent him to jail claiming the arrested boy was 18 although he was only 14-year-old as per his official records.

The minor boy’s life turned into a veritable hell just after he refused to give a jackfruit for free to the local policemen one day. The fake case has cost his family dear as the poor family has so far spent more than Rs500,000 to fight the legal battles to prove that the minor is innocent.

Reports said the cops from a police station in Patna, the capital of Bihar state, had been allegedly extorting fresh green vegetables from a vegetable seller Sukan Paswan, who sells it from his hand-driven cart. The “daily routine” got broken on March 19 this year when in the absence of Paswan, his son Pankaj Kumar refused to give vegetables free of cost to the cops.

According to family members, hardly had the boy returned home in the evening after selling vegetables, a police jeep came to his house and asked him to reach the police station. “The cops riding the police jeep told the boy to sit inside saying their boss has called him at the police station. I rushed to save him but by then, the police jeep had sped away,” a woman family member of the victim said.

In the next few days, anxious family members ran from one police station to another, trying to know his whereabouts but to no avail. Two days later, the family came to know that the boy has been jailed in a case of bike robbery along with two other youths.

“When I met him in jail, he told me that he doesn’t even know the two criminals arrested on bike robbery charges. The police even obtained his signature on a plain paper by resorting to third degree torture,” the victim’s father Paswan alleged.

Subsequently, he petitioned the local police officials seeking justice but as none came to his rescue, he finally shot off a letter to the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who ordered an investigation in the case on Friday last and asked the police to submit the report within two days.