“Changing” Bihar: 14,000 kidnapped in five years

This is a story about how Bihar has really “changed” under the ruling National Democratic Alliance government headed by chief minister Nitish Kumar in Bihar.

According to a latest police report released here today, a total of around 14,000 incidents of kidnapping, including 701 cases of abduction for ransom, were reported during the last five years in Bihar.

The report was today published in a local vernacular daily published from Patna.

The report said a total of 13,932 people were kidnapped during the last five years since 2005, the year when the NDA government came to power after ousting the 15-year-old RJD govenrment.

The report divides the cases of kidnapping into two categories - “common kidnapping” and “kidnapping for ransom”, and brilliantly tries to “underplay” the kidnapping cases which saw an unexpected boom under the Nitish Kumar regime.

The police department also coined a new word “honeymoon kidnapping” with the twin strategy to downplay the increasing cases of kidnapping for marriage by the groom families and “save” the skin of police department as well as the ruling govenrment which had announced to establish a “rule of law” in Bihar.

The report states, a total of 2,226 cases of “common kidnapping” were reported in 2005, followed by 2,301 in 2006, 2,092 in 2007, 2,735 in 2008, 3,142 in 2009 and 735 cases of kidnapping in the first two months of this year (2010).

It further says 251 people were kidnapped for ransom in 2005, followed by 194 in 2006, 89 in 2007, 66 in 2008, 80 in 2009 and 21 in the first two months of the current year.

“We fail to understand what the common kidnapping means. A kidnapping is a kidnapping which the govenrment must admit”, said a senior RJD leader Ram Kripal Yadav.

The LJP, the other prominent opposition party, too has reacted very sharply over the prevailing law and order situation in Bihar saying “It’s a worse than Jungle Raj”.

“The government had promised to establish a ‘Rule of Law’ but today law and order situation is at its nadir and nobody is safe”, LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan has alleged.