Schoolgirls taste mob’s wrath for outing sex pests

In a shameful incident from Bihar, a village mob punished more than 30 schoolgirls by beating them mercilessly after they rebuffed the sexual overtures of some local boys.

The girls -- all of them between 12 and 16 years of age -- were admitted to a local hospital. Six of the girls are in critical condition and suffered internal injuries.

The incident took place at the State-funded Kasturba Gandhi residential school in Triveniganj block's Dafarkha village in Supaul. More than 80 girls, mostly from the SC-ST community, were being harassed by youths from a nearby village. They would pass lewd remarks and write vulgar comments on the school wall. No action was taken despite complaints to the school administration.

On Saturday, some girls caught some youths who were trying to write a vulgar comment on the school wall. Seeing this, they scolded them; but when the boys refused and misbehaved, the girls beat them up in self-defence, said one of the eyewitnesses at the school.

However, after some time, a mob of about two dozen people, armed with sticks, swooped down on the school. Among the mob were some of the youths and their parents and relatives, the police said, quoting one of the students.

‘‘I saw the mob, both men and women, thrashing them. They were kicked and beaten with canes,’’ said Reema Raj, warden of the school, reports India Today.com The portal adds that the pandemonium inside the school continued for an hour. The girls were brutally beaten. Many were bleeding. The school property was also vandalized.

The disclosure has caused much embarrassment to the Nitish government. Earlier this year, inmates of a government-funded shelter home in Muzaffarpur had complained that they were raped on multiple occasions.

In a series of tweets, Tejashwi Yadav said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has "totally surrendered himself before goons while the Deputy CM is begging mercy for hardened criminals".