Madhubani police firing judicial probe report blames RJD, CPI

Patna: The judicial commission, which probed the Madhubani police firing on October 12, 2012, has held the RJD and the CPI responsible for escalating the "riotous situation" by resorting to vandalism and burning of government offices in the town.

Two persons were killed and over a dozen injured in the police firing in this town in north Bihar, around 180 km northeast of here.

The Bihar government today tabled the findings of the single-member judicial commission headed by Justice (Retired) Uday Sinha of Patna High Court and the Action Taken Report on the findings in the state legislature.

"The group of Santosh Kumar Yadav, Badal Gupta, Suresh Kumar Singh, Sanjay Paswan and others associated with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) indulged in vandalism and burnt the offices at Madhubani. The visit of Ramchandra Purve (state RJD president) to Madhubani Jail to meet Santosh Kumar Yadav points finger at the link with RJD," the report states.

"The Communist Party of India (CPI), Madhubani escalated the riotous situation. It tried to take political mileage out of it to make their presence felt in the political firmament. With that in mind, Manoj Mishra, Ram Naresh Pandey, Hemchandra Jha etc. Stoked the fire which created the ruckus and indulged in vandalism," the report adds.

The report, tabled by Water Resources Minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary in the Legislative Assembly, and the Legislative Council, also justified the police firing calling it "not excessive".

It also absolved the CPI(ML) of the charges of taking part in vandalism and ruckus in Madhubani.

The police had opened fire when people were agitating for the recovery of a missing boy Prashant Kumar Jha (17), who was subsequently found along with his girlfriend Preeti Kumari (14) from New Delhi after the two had eloped without telling anything to their respective family members.

The local people led by Jha's kins had intensified their agitation after the police had refused to hand over to them a dead, decomposed body, which they believed to be of Jha, but the police insisted on the basis of medical reports that it was of somebody else.

The police fired on the mob after it indulged in large-scale violence and arson of public property following the refusal of local police to hand over the body.