City under siege

Patna, July 26: Bihar State Human Rights Commission (BSHRC) on Thursday “reprimanded” the state police for its “utter failure” to protect the violation of human rights on June 2 during the funeral procession of slain Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Mukhiya and has hence asked them to apologise for the same.

The commission, which had on June 4 taken suo motu cognisance of the arson and rioting by the miscreants during the funeral procession, called for a detailed report from the director-general of police and inspector general of police (Bihar Military Police).

The commission had asked the police to explain as to why preventive measures were not taken to protect the people at large and also what action they had taken against the miscreants on the basis of video footage.

“The police should have at least apologised to the people for the hardships and inconvenience which they had to face. The report does not give any such indication. It is the duty of the police as the law enforcing agency of the state to protect one’s human rights and where it fails to do so and the failure is on such a large scale, it deserves to be reprimanded,” Justice S.N. Jha, the BSHRC chairperson, said in his order while closing the file.

Taking a serious note of the police’s reply that any retaliatory administrative action would have resulted in large-scale violence that could have spread to other parts of the state, the commission, which admitted that it cannot question the wisdom of the police’s decision to tolerate the acts of the miscreants questioned as to why such a situation was allowed to develop which created a major law and order problem.

It is clear that the administration failed to foresee the situation and take pre-emptive measures, the human rights body said. “The commission is not concerned with the administrative failure, the concern of the commission is the resultant large-scale violation of human rights of the people which the police utterly failed to protect,” Justice Jha said.

The commission also took exception to the reply filed by the police, in which they spoke about the post-incident action, whereas BSHRC had sought report as to why preventive measures were not taken to protect the people.

The police, however, defended before the commission saying that all necessary measures such as additional forces were made available on the night of June 1 itself.