Patna: Four officials engaged in launching campaign against child labour escaped from nearly being lynched by a mob in Bihar on the suspicion of being child abductors. This is the second such incident in the past three days.
Police said the labour inspectors were conducting raids on the road side eateries and other shops employing child labours in Rohtas district on Thursday.
Under part of this drive, the officials reached a sweet shop in Shivsagar block of the district and picked up a child labour before moving away with him on their official car.
Hardly had they gone when a rumour spread in the areas that four people have abducted a child and fled on a car. Soon a group of local youths and villagers riding bikes and other vehicles gave a hot chase to the officials’ car and overtook it at some distance.
Within no time, a mob of the local villagers went on thrashing the officials after dragging them out of the car while another group damaged their car.
Some saner elements in the crowd, however, intervened in the matter and it was then that the officials were saved from being lynched.
Police said they have registered a case and the matter is being investigated. “We have registered the case and trying to identify the persons involved in attacking the officials,” a local police official Manoj Kumar Singh told the media on Thursday.
This is the second such incident in the past three days. On Monday, angry mob of villagers had thrashed two scientists conducting survey of mineral resources after suspecting them to be child abductors. The incident took place in neighbouring Kaimur district.
In another incident, a woman was lynched on the same suspicion in Vaishali district of Bihar on Thursday morning. As such the mentally disturbed woman had entered the house of a villager after which the local villagers suspected her to be child lifters and thrashed her badly, killing her on the spot.
Witnesses said the woman was tried to an electric pole and assaulted badly after which she collapsed.
The incident of mob attacks and lynching has registered an alarming rise in Bihar and in the past one month alone, around 20 such were reported in which at least four people were killed, media reports have said.
Keeping in view the gravity of the situation, the police have been regularly launching awareness campaign in the areas while top officials, including the Bihar’s director general of police Gupteshwar Pandey, have appealed to the masses to maintain calm but this has failed to put a brake on such incidents.
