Abducted Bihar school boy's mother threatens self-immolation

India
Abducted Bihar school boy's mother threatens self-immolation
By IANS, Apr 20, 2007 - 4:40:08 PM

Patna, April 20 - The mother of six-year-old Ankit, who was abducted more than a week ago from outside his school here, Friday threatened to immolate herself in front of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's official residence if police failed to rescue her son.

Frustrated over repeated assurances by police that they would find her son, Poonam Devi said if her son was not rescued in the next 24 hours she would immolate herself.

'Police failure to recover Ankit is giving us sleepless nights. The wait is unbearable and painful. How long will it go on?' asked Poonam Devi, who is in her early 30s.

'There is no trace of Ankit. Every day is an ordeal. I will kill myself if police fail to recover my son in the next 24 hours,' Pooam said Friday.

Ankit, a lower kindergarten student, was abducted on April 12 from outside St. Paul's School in Gaighat locality. His father Manoj Kumar Gope is a small-time businessman who also runs a beauty parlour.

Angry over the police failure to trace the boy, traders and businessmen of Patna city held a protest rally and closed their shops Thursday.

All the main wholesale markets are located in the Patna city areas, known as the business hub of Bihar.

School children and teachers joined the protests here against the failure of the police to rescue Ankit.

Congress leaders said Nitish Kumar had promised to make Bihar a crime-free state within three months when he came to power in November 2005, but had failed miserably.

'Now, instead of checking lawlessness and the spate of abductions, Nitish Kumar has been making false promises of development by laying foundation stones daily,' Congress leader Premchand Mishra said.

An association of school children has requested Governor R.S. Gavai to intervene in the matter. On Saturday, about 1,000 students of different schools of the city are scheduled to stage a protest march to Raj Bhawan to demand rescue of Ankit from the clutches of his kidnappers.

Nitish Kumar had asked top police officials to find the missing boy soon. Two special police teams that were formed to trace Ankit returned from Chapra and Muzaffarpur districts Wednesday without success.

Four people have been detained for interrogation, Patna senior superintendent of police Kundan Krishnan said. Police said they have also zeroed in on a domestic servant, Balram Paswan, who has been missing since Ankit's abduction.

The spate of abduction in Bihar continues with three more youths having been kidnapped from two different areas of the state. Police have failed to make any breakthrough in tracing them.

More than 900 people have been abducted across the state in the first three months of 2007. M.P. Gupta, a senior lawyer of the Patna High Court, quoted a court report saying that 903 cases of kidnappings took place in Bihar from Jan 1 to March 31. January accounted for 333 abductions, February for 361 and 209 kidnappings took place in March.

According to officials, there were over 2,000 cases of kidnapping in 2006 alone.

Bihar's kidnappers are clearly thriving. Lawyers, doctors, contractors, businessmen and school students have been the prime targets of abductors for ransom.

Earlier this year, the Patna High Court had directed the state government to trace 144 children and 581 women who had been missing since 2001.

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