New Delhi: It was one abduction in every six hours in 1995, and then it became six abductions a day in 2001. In 2007, the first three months saw 900 kidnappings, at the rate of 10 a day; the 'kidnapping industry' is only booming in Bihar in spite of the tall promises of 'tough-sounding' Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
The state, India's third largest, may have changed a lot on the economic front under Nitish Kumar, but it's going from worse to worst on the law and order front.
It was, in fact, a huge spurt in the past three months, equaling almost the half of the total number of cases in the whole of 2006. This year, January alone accounted for 333 abductions, February for 361 while 209 kidnappings took place in March.
The case of six-year-old Ankit, the son of a small-time businessman from Patna, is only one of the 900 kidnapping cases reported in the past 90 days.
Lawyers, doctors, contractors, businessmen and school students have been the prime targets of abductors for ransom. And due to this spurt in kidnappings, hundreds of well-to-do professionals have migrated to bigger cities or sent their children to boarding schools outside the state.
The total number of kidnapping cases in 2006 stood at 2,000.
Nitish Kumar had taken over as the Chief Minister of the state in November 2005, and immediately after assuming charge he had declared an all-out war against these criminals and promised to turn Bihar into a crime-free state in three months.
In a story on the kidnapping menace in Bihar in 2003, the Time magazine had reported the presence of more than 100 kidnap gangs in the state. It said the kidnappers' gangs not only run after the rich and the famous, they prey even on small-time traders like grocers and sweet sellers earning barely Rs 100 a day.
Today, nearly 5,000 criminals involved in abduction cases are roaming freely in the state, claims MP Gupta, a senior lawyer of the Patna High Court and the general secretary of the Council for Protection of Public Rights and Welfare, which is fighting a public interest litigation related to these crimes in Patna High Court.
He said a total of 14,276 abduction cases were pending in courts in the state. Early this year, the Patna High Court had directed the government to trace 144 children and 581 women reported missing since 2001. The court also took note of reports that 44 of the abducted children had been killed.
What's more, Bihar police officials admit that the real figure of such crimes may actually be 10 times higher than what is on record. The problem is, they say, there is a cynicism in public about the effectiveness of taking the police into confidence, as there is a wide perception that politicians are stakeholders in this cash-rich 'industry'. Also, kidnappers typically threaten to return if the victims go to the authorities, they say.
A fact-finding report by the People's Union of Civil Liberties in 1994 says, "So wide and octopus-like has the grip of criminals on society become and so complete the lack of confidence of the people in the administration is that only a fraction of the cases is reported to the police. Instead, people prefer to go for a direct negotiation with the kidnappers."
The activists also point out that if thousands of criminals are at large, it's because most of them are either henchmen of politicians, or they have themselves joined politics and become MLAs and MPs.
"This has contributed to the total collapse of the rule of law," the Bihar's unit of People's Union of Civil Liberties says in a report.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar believes the state police are doing reasonably well. "There cannot be cent per cent success. No police can guarantee 100 per cent results. But the Bihar Police is trying and are investigating," he claims.
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