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05/06/2011

Forbesganj firing: Govt says compensation only after probe is over

Patna,(BiharTimes): A day after the police firing on villagers in Forbesganj district, which killed four people, including a seven-month old girl, state home secretary Amir Subhani said on Saturday that the government would take a decision on compensation to the victims only after the completion of probe into the incident.


The home secretary and ADG Police Headquarters Rajyawardhan Sharma rushed to the spot to probe the circumstances that caused the incident. Subhani claimed that police fired only ten rounds. Sharma, on the other hand, said only a thorough probe would reveal whether the police firing was provoked or could have been avoided.
As reported the incident took place at the site of a Rs 130-crore project of maize starch, liquid glucose and captive power plant on the land of Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority (BIADA). The villagers of Bhajanpur earlier used the land as an approach path to their homes.
The official version is that a mob of villagers assembled at the site, torched several machines and tractors and also demolished the boundary wall of the plant.

Three people died in the firing between the mob and the police. A child succumbed to her injuries on Saturday. Official sources said 27 policemen and a magistrate were also hurt.
The home secretary and ADG, who interacted with villagers and police and civil officials, wondered why the villagers assembled at the spot when an agreement had been reached between the villagers and the BIADA on June 1 on an alternative route for public use, barely 100 metres away.
However, local people told BiharTimes over phone that the firm agreed to leave the road intact and that the villagers turned wild only when the road came within boundary wall erected by the factory. The angry crowd demolished the newly-laid wall and the property and vehicles of the plant. The villagers denied that there was any firing from their side too.
However, Subhani warned that law and order would be maintained at all costs. The guilty would not be spared in the larger interest of a conducive industrial climate in the state.
It needs to be reminded that Saurabh Agrawal, one of the directors of the firm, is the son of BJP MLC Ashok Agrawal.
As situation remains uneasy throughout the region several television channels showed a junior police officials trampling over a person, who suffered serious injuries in the police firing. The scene evoked widespread condemnation by viewers in a phone-in interview by one of the channels.
Only a few months back four people, including a woman, died in firing by SSB jawans in a village bordering Nepal in the same Araria district. Then the SSB alleged that those killed were smugglers, but the local villagers charged that the para-military men would often harass the women-folk of the region. It was only when they protested that the SSB indulged in mayhem.


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