Patna: A local court in Bihar has granted bail to a prisoner with the condition that he will educate children from poor families free of cost.
The prisoner, languishing in jail for the past nine months, was found indulging in illicit trade of liquor in the state which enforced total prohibition five years ago.
Avinash Kumar, Additional district judge, Jhanjharpur, granted bail to Nitish Kumar Yadav after hearing arguments of both sides on Monday. Jhanjharpur is a sub-divisional town located in northern Bihar’s Madhubani district bordering Nepal.
Court officials said the judge asked the prisoner to take up the responsibility of five poor children’s education for three months and then submit a certificate mentioning that the accused successfully fulfilled the responsibility which the court had given him. The certificate will mention that he educated the children free of cost for three months. The judge also asked the accused to strictly follow the liquor prohibition law in Bihar.
All kinds of liquor trade remains illegal in Bihar and the state government imposed total liquor ban on sale, consumption and manufacture of liquor.
According to an official report, more than 346,000 people have been arrested for violating the law in Bihar so far since the new liquor law came into force on April 1, 2016. Among them, 5,000 people have been arrested from Punjab, Haryana and Jharkhand for illegally supplying liquor in dry Bihar, Bihar’s minister for Prohibition and Excise Sunil Kumar has told the Bihar state assembly.
The report also said that a total of 255,111 cases related to alcohol law violations have been registered in between April 2016 and January 2021 while 37,484 vehicles were confiscated for illegally trans-porting liquor.
Similarly, cases have been registered against 348 government officials while 186 officials have been dismissed for service for showing leniency in implementing liquor law or allegedly indulging in liquor trade during the same period.
A juvenile justice board in Biharsharif had earlier ordered a juvenile offender to launch “Save Girls” campaign as a punishment for attacking a woman in Nalanada district. The juvenile had been convicted of firing shots at a woman while she was returning from the market in July 2013.
A similar kind of punishment was handed over to two teenagers by the same court when they were told to make the villagers aware about the importance of voting rights as a punishment for assaulting their neighbours.
