Violence erupts after mob lynches school head in Bihar
AUTOPSY CONFIRMS TWO CHILDREN DIED FROM DROWNING, AND NOT FROM ASSAULTS
Violence erupted in Bihar yesterday a day after the head of a school was lynched and the school building set on fire by an angry crowd protesting the death of two students who were enrolled there.
The lynching took place late on Sunday evening at Nirpur village, in central Bihar Nalanda district, which also happens to be the home district of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar.
Angry at the lynching incident, furious villagers yesterday disrupted road and rail traffic, clashed with the police and pelted stones on the vehicles of senior police and administrative officials, damaging them badly.
They demanded stern action against the people who killed school director Devendra Prasad Sinha, also known as DPS.
The school ran by the acronym ‘DPS’ but was in fact a decrepit structure totally unconnected to a well-known school chain with the same acronym.
The crowd comprising local villagers had gone on the rampage on Sunday shortly after the bodies of two students aged seven and eleven were recovered from a water-filled ditch near the school in the morning. They suspected the involvement of teachers in the incident.
Witnesses said a mob raided the school and dragged its director to the street, before beating and kicking him for hours. Reports said the villagers took turns to assault the school director even as the police looked on helplessly.
Grievous injuries
Live TV footage showed people holding huge bamboo sticks in their hands and ruthlessly raining blows on the director, ignoring his appeals for mercy. The mob also allegedly damaged his left eye before lynching. By the time help arrived, he had succumbed to grievous injuries.
“We have identified eight accused persons so far after watching the footages and are conducting raids to nab them,” the additional director generation of police, Patna, Sunil Kumar told journalists yesterday.
The state government has also placed under suspension a local police office under whose jurisdiction the incident took place.
The autopsy report yesterday confirmed the two children died from drowning in the water-filled ditch, and not from assaults as the villagers had suspected.
The autopsy reports also found no external injuries on the bodies of the deceased students whose death sparked violence.
“It appears the students had gone outside to meet nature’s call but slipped into the water pond just outside the school and drowned,” the local Nalanda district superintendent of police Siddharth Kumar Jain said.