Crowd strips woman, destroys property after youth’s murder

Police have registered a case against more than 300 people in Bihar

Awoman in Bihar was dragged out of her home, stripped naked and then paraded through the streets over mere suspicions that she was involved in the murder of a teenager.

A crowd went berserk shortly after the body of Bimalesh Kumar, a Grade 12 student, was found lying on the railway tracks at Bihiya town in Bhojpur district, some 50km west of Patna, on Monday afternoon.

Witnesses said the mob went out of control torching shops, houses and vehicles.

They also pelted stones at trains passing through the railway lines.

The crowd also attacked the houses of sex workers and began assaulting them badly, suspecting their involvement in the murder.

Appealed for mercy

Even as the hooliganism continued, the mob dragged a female dancer out of her dwelling, ripped off her clothes and then paraded her naked through the streets while kicking and slapping for over an hour as the police force remained a mute spectator before the huge crowd of attackers, reports said.

Witnesses said the crowd paraded the woman for some half a kilometre and took no notice of her repeated appeals for mercy. The woman screamed for help and wept bitterly.

Somehow the police rescued her from the clutches of the lynching mob and admitted her to a local hospital.

“The mob tore the clothes off a woman and the paraded her through the streets in the same condition on suspicions that she was involved in the murder,” Bihar’s additional director-general of police S.K. Singhal told journalists yesterday adding the police have arrested 15 people in connection with the incident.

Police have registered a case against more than 300 suspects in connection with the incident and efforts are on to find them.