SUPAUL: Ten people were arrested in Bihar’s Supaul for the mob attack on minor girl students of a residential government school after they protested eve-teasing by some local boys, police said on Monday.
Police conducted raids in nearby villages and arrested all the people named in the FIR, including three women, for the attack on the girl students of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) at Darpakha. “Efforts are on to identify nearly 15 unnamed local people who had a role in Saturday’s attack on the girl students at the school. They will be arrested soon,” said additional superintendent of police (ASP), Supaul, Jitendra Kumar.
The situation at Darpakha, where the residential school for girls from SC-ST, OBC and minority communities is located, remained tense on Monday after the arrests were made. To ward off a possible retaliation by the villagers, the district police deployed five male and five female constables outside the school.
Of the 34 girl students of the central government-run school who were injured after being beaten up with sticks by the local boys and their parents, ten are still recuperating at the district hospital. They will be discharged on Tuesday, said officials.
Sources said IG (Darbhanga zone) Pankaj Kumar Darad, who is monitoring the investigations into the case, has asked for a probe to see if the school administration had taken steps to ensure such a clash between the students and the local people do not take place.
About 20 people, including some women, had attacked the girls when they were playing on the school ground on Saturday evening. Minutes before the attack began, some of the girls had scolded and beaten up a boy who they saw was writing a vulgar comment on the girls on the school wall. The boys then gathered the local people and attacked the girls.
“Although eve teasing by local youths and boys from another school nearby had been a regular incident, the KGBV authorities had a blind eye to it. They had never brought the matter before police,” said a police official familiar with the ongoing probe.
The incident prompted a political slug-fest in Bihar with Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav of RJD questioning Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s silence on it.
“CM Kursi (chair) Kumar maintains cunning silence over the matter as he did on the repeated rapes of over 40 helpless inmates of Muzaffarpur Balika Grih,” tweeted Yadav. He also called the CM “Besharm (shameless) Kumar” in another tweet.
While Neeraj Kumar, MLC and spokesperson of the ruling JD(U), accused RJD of politicizing the matter despite the action being taken against the accused, BJP legislator Neeraj Kumar Bablu accused the Supaul administration of being “unduly partial to RJD supporters in the area”.