Bihar lynching: A day later, villagers show no remorse

Villagers also trashed the drowning theory as they claimed that the boy from Pachwara knew how to swim, and that his clothes were found at some distance from the crime scene.

A day after a Nalanda school director was lynched by an angry mob over the deaths of two students, irate villagers showed little remorse over the brutal lynching, while refusing to believe that the two victims had slipped into a ditch and died. The family of one of the victims claimed that the boys were beaten for refusing to consume stale bread being served at school.

“My brother and one of his hostel mates had refused to eat stale bread offered to them at the Nirpur private residential school. The school principal had beaten them badly on Saturday. Their bodies were found in a pit barely 100 metres from school. My brother’s left eye had injury marks and left hand was also broken,” said Soni (16), the sister of a 14-year-old victim from Pachwara village. Pachwara is barely two kilometres from the private school whose director, Devendra Prasad Sinha, was lynched around Sunday noon. The other 10-year-old victim hailed from Rajgir village.

“We do not send our children to eat stale bread. The school meted out barbaric treatment to the two boys and paid the price for it”, said a Pachwara villager, who was unapologetic about the director’s death. “Can anyone understand Manohar’s pain of losing his only son?” he asked.

Villagers also trashed the drowning theory as they claimed that the boy from Pachwara knew how to swim, and that his clothes were found at some distance from the crime scene.

As police awaited the postmortem report, some Nirpur residents alleged that the deaths could be related to an alleged illicit relationship the woman school principal that the boys might have discovered.

It was the school principal who had first alerted Manohar Kumar, a farmer from Pachwara, about his son being missing. Manohar had rushed to the school with other villagers after getting the call.

An eyewitness said that the crowd lost patience after the school director kept changing his statement. “Villagers found the victim’s school bag near the spot. The crowd then started beating Sinha, and dragged him out on the road.

The police came, but returned sensing the anger in the crowd. When police returned with reinforcements, Sinha was being thrashed with bamboos,” the eyewitness.

The school, which had shifted to an under-construction building almost 45 days ago was ransacked and torched. The school had nine classrooms for some 50 students. But only 10 students from adjoining villages had been living there, with classrooms doubling up as residential quarters and children sleeping on makeshift beds made by clubbing benches together.

Gudiya Kumari, cousin of the teenage victim from Pachwara, said: “My uncle paid Rs 4,000 per month for the boy’s food, lodging and schooling. He had been enrolled last year.”

Meanwhile, protesters blocked roads and railway tracks in Hilsa, Nalanda, demanding the immediate arrest of the culprits.

Courtesy: The Indian Express