Eloped girls’ parents slapping abduction case on boyfriends, or any other men of their choice, seems to have become a trend in Darbhanga.

Police admitted that abduction FIRs filed in the district were mostly aimed at sorting out personal disputes, including fixing marriages. If the cops are to be believed, cases of abduction for ransom have drastically come down for quite some time and are at present almost negligible.

Statistics available with the police department reveal that 1,127 cases of kidnapping have been lodged with various police stations of the Darbhanga range that comprises 10 districts — Darbhanga, Madhubani, Samastipur, Saharsa, Madhepura, Supaul, Purnea, Araria, Kishanganj and Katihar. Of all these cases, only four were related to abduction — one each in Darbhanga, Samastipur, Madhepura and Katihar. The remaining cases pertain to a range of objectives.

Darbhanga range inspector-general (IG) R.K. Mishra told the Telegraph that most of the abduction cases were registered under sections 363A (kidnapping or maiming a minor for purposes of begging) and 366 (kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel marriage) of the Indian Penal Code. A few cases are registered under sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) and 364A (kidnapping for ransom)”

He added: “It has been found that 25 per cent of the cases registered under sections 363A and 366 are true and the offenders have actually eloped with some minor girls. But 75 per cent of such cases are dubious because we have found during interrogation that the boys and the girls who have eloped are adults and have fled with mutual consent. On most occasions, these couples solemnise their marriages either in courts or in temples. Most of them even return to their respective homes after getting married.”

To drive home his point, Mishra cited a recent case that was lodged against one Akhilesh Kumar Singh with the Banmankhi police station for the alleged abduction of one Khushbu Kumari. He said: “Akhilesh had been to jail several times in the past. An FIR was again filed against him after Khushbu was allegedly abducted on March 17. Traders of Banmankhi market kept their shutters down and angry residents paralysed traffic on the busy Purnea-Saharsa road for nearly four hours in protest against the abduction. But during the course of investigation, the police found that she had eloped with one of her distant relatives.”

The IG added that the Purnea superintendent of police, Amit Lodha, had said immediately after the incident that it was not a case of kidnapping. Mishra said: “The trend is that whenever a girl goes missing, her parent immediately file a kidnap bid case against a man. Such parents, in this way, mislead the police despite knowing that their daughters have eloped.”

The IG also talked about a “rarest-of-rare case” that he described, in the parlance of police, as “Naxalite kidnapping”. He said: “Naxalites kidnap persons mostly for killing, though there are some exceptions. There is no special provision for tracking such cases. We treat such cases under Section 364 of the IPC.”