Frequent instances of criminals striking at unsuspecting residents at will are testing chief minister Nitish Kumar's no-tolerance policy on law and order.
A gang looted a family in Patna in the early hours of Friday, while a second robbed a bank in Nalanda and a third shot at a lawyer in Buxar. The incidents come three days after at least two petrol pumps were looted in Sitamarhi and Saran districts on Monday.
In Patna's Agamkuan police station area, eight men broke into the house of businessman Brajesh Kumar at Sector 8 of Bahadurpur Housing Colony around 1.30 in the night.
Brajesh said: "We were all sleeping when about 1.30am eight armed men, their faces covered, broke into the house through the roof. A relative and I were sleeping in separate rooms on the roof and we were locked in. There were women sleeping on the ground floor and the men assaulted my sister-in-law Nisha Devi and her sister Neetu Kumari while robbing the house for close to an hour. They were threatened against raising an alarm. Cash and valuables worth Rs 3 lakh were lost."
The Agamkuan police station is barely 300m from Brajesh's home but that did not deter the criminals.
In Nalanda, around 70km southeast of Patna, three men posing as customers entered a nationalised bank at Sohsarai and looted Rs 42 lakh from the strong room at the branch.
Nalanda superintendent of police (SP) Vivekananda said no one has been arrested in connection with the bank robbery.
He told The Telegraph: "The men entered the bank at 10.30am posing as customers. The five employees present at the branch were immediately taken at gunpoint and one of them was made to open the strong room. There are CCTV cameras in the bank but the criminals took the hard disk (that stores the CCTV footage) with them. Raids are on to nab the criminals and the employees are being quizzed too."
In Buxar, around 100km west of Patna, a lawyer at the sub-divisional court, Prem Prakash, was shot at. Critically injured, the 46-year-old victim was referred to a Varanasi hospital.
Police said the assailants fired at the lawyer around 12 noon when he was on way to the court. Prakash managed to identify the attackers and revealed their names to the police before losing consciousness.
The lawyer identified Sunny Srivastava and Prakash Srivastava, residents of Sanhi locality of Buxar town.
Buxar SP Upendra Sharma, who went to the hospital to enquire about the victim, said Prakash was hit from behind and the bullet had pierced through his back. "Raids have been launched to nab the accused," he told The Telegraph over phone.
Nitish, in a law and order meeting last Saturday, had said: "There will be no compromise in upholding the rule of law, which is at top of the government's priority."
Patna's senior superintendent of police Vikas Vaibhav said investigations were being conducted into the Agamkuan loot.
"The five police station house officers of Rupaspur, Parsa Bazaar, SK Puri, Agamkuan and Kankerbagh have been given a week's deadline to solve the cases of thefts and loots in their jurisdiction. Otherwise, they will face action."
