Rinku Devi shows the picture of her missing husband Pintu Yadav. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, Jan. 10: Four men, all released on provisional bail by the high court and carrying out community work at the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts, have gone missing after a team claiming to be from the Special Task Force (STF) of the police forcibly took them away yesterday afternoon.

The STF has categorically denied that any of its personnel were involved. Inspector-general of police (operations) Kumar Rajesh Chandra, who also heads the state STF, told The Telegraph that the men had not been picked up by any team from the crack force.

The four men — Pintu Yadav, Chandan Kumar, Sunny Kumar and Naveen Yadav, all aged between 21 and 35 years — had been serving time in prison for various crimes but had been released on provisional bail by Patna High Court last year. They were carrying out community work at the trust office on the court’s orders.

Families of three of the men today made rounds of the offices of the trust and that of the Patna senior superintendent of police, Alok Kumar, seeking answers to their questions.

Rinku Devi, the wife of Pintu Yadav and a resident of Lalji Tola under Gandhi Maidan police station, said her husband had been sent to prison in connection with a looting case sometime during Holi last year.

“On December 4, the high court granted him provisional bail for six months and directed him to do community service under Acharya Kishore Kunal (chairman of the board of religious trusts). If his character was found satisfactory by the religious board, the court would grant him permanent bail,” Rinku (28) told The Telegraph.

According to Rinku’s narrative, corroborated by trust officials, around noon yesterday, around 8-10 men reached the trust office at Mandiri in two cars. “I gave him (Pintu) a call around 12 noon. He said there were a lot of men who had come from the STF and he had been made to sit in the office. He disconnected the call. I again rang him up around 12.30pm. He said he would call up later. Around 3.30pm, I came to know that he had been taken away by the men. Along with a relative, I first went to the Buddha Colony police station (under which Mandiri area falls) but got no information. I then went to the Gandhi Maidan police station but again got no reply,” she said.

The trust officials said much the same. “They just barged into the office, we couldn’t count how many of them were there. They simply said they were from the STF. They went upstairs and soon came down with these four men. They were pushed into the cars and whisked away. They didn’t say anything to us, nor did they show us any documents,” Tulsi Das, an official at the office, told The Telegraph.

Chandra, the STF chief, said his men had nothing to do with the incident. “I can categorically say that the men didn’t belong to the Special Task Force. They could either be criminals posing as STF personnel or men from the ‘rangdari cell’ of the Patna police,” he said.

Alok Kumar, the Patna SSP, refused to comment.

Trust chief Acharya Kunal, himself a former IPS officer, said the high court would be informed of the disappearance of the four men. “May be they (the four men) are related to some other case, but even then, there needs to be at least some information. All the four were working in the office and their conduct was good. This shows the attitude of the police: once you are a criminal, you are always a criminal and there is no chance given for improvement,” he told The Telegraph.