Patna, Jan. 13: The Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts is preparing an information petition to be filed in Patna High Court in a bid to bring the attention of the judiciary towards the forcible detention of four men who were out on provisional bail and were carrying out community service on the court’s order.

Acharya Kishore Kunal, the chairman of the trust, told The Telegraph that the police action without offering any explanation was unacceptable and was a “disrespect” to the high court order.

“The process of the high court sending the accused to the trust for community work started in 2008 and until now we have taken care of more than 200 cases. As per our information, in none of the cases has a person, having done community work with a good conduct and having secured permanent bail from the high court, gone back to the world of crime. The action of the cops is shocking and can be said to be a disrespect of the court. We will file an information petition informing the court about the matter and request it to direct the cops not to repeat it again,” Kunal, himself a former IPS officer, said.

The information petition is likely to be filed on Monday. Y.C. Verma, a senior advocate with Patna High Court, said such a petition is meant to furnish information to the court about action taken by some authority which can be said to be in violation of the court’s order.

Kunal said the trust would not have had a problem if the police had sought permission before taking the men with them. “If the police wanted these men for investigation of a case or suspected them to have committed other crimes, they are free to take them away. But for this, the cops had to duly inform the officials or myself for their action. They didn’t. A whole group just barged into the trust office and dragged the four men into their cars. No one in the office was given any information. It is the court which sends them to the trust to do community service,” he said.

On Tuesday, about a dozen policemen in civilian clothing, who said they were from the Special Task Force — a claim that later turned out to be false — barged into the trust office in Mandiri area and forcibly took away the four men — Pintu Yadav, Chandan Kumar, Sunny Kumar and Naveen Yadav.

It later transpired that the policemen were from the Specific Information Unit (SIU) — commonly knows as the Rangdaari Cell — and the Patrakar Nagar police station.

The four men were released around 10pm the same day. Police, under fire for what was described as high-handedness and contempt for the criminal reform system, said the men had been picked up in connection with a case of loot in a liquor shop.