4,311 cases pending in SC/ST police stations in Bihar

Even as the Nitish Kumar government has laid thrust on justice for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, cases relating to atrocities on SC/ST are increasing and a good number of them are pending in police stations. "The cases are piling up because of the slow pace of their disposal,'' officials claim. According to official records available at the state police headquarters here, 4311 cases lodged under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 are still pending with different SC/ST police stations up to May this year. The then National SC/ST Commission chairman Buta Singh, during his visit to Bihar on April 6, 2010, had expressed serious concern over the growing number of cases of atrocities, noting that hardly two per cent of them reach logical conclusion. While the number of cases of atrocities and repression were reported to be 3,723 in 2008, it rose to 5,129 in 2009 but then declined to 3,551 in 2010. State Additional Director-General of Police (Crime Investigation Department) A S Nimbran said there are seven to eight such districts where 50 per cent of cases of atrocities are pending and these are normally the districts where very less number of cases are registered every year. Nimbran confided that there are 200 cases of atrocities and repression being registered in Bihar every month. There are 239, 196, 186, 180, 167, 141 and 121 cases pending in the districts of Muzaffarpur, Saran, Begusarai, Motihari, Gaya, Patna and Gopalganj districts, respectively, he said.

Its hard to mark up total sanitation in Bihar by 2012

Total Sanitation Campaign to provide sanitation in all rural areas of Bihar by 2012 has not been up to the mark, according to a CAG report. Principal Accountant General (Bihar) Preman Dinaraj told reporters today that the programme, launched by the Centre in 1999 and was to be implemented in a time-bound manner, suffered at various stages due to the non-availability of reliable baseline data and slow and tardy implementation. The other problems faced by the programme were expenditure on various components, deficient information on education and communication activities, lack of community participation and proper monitoring. The Centre had approved Rs 1967.11 crore for all 38 districts of the state for the programme but the expenditure against available funds ranged between 20 and 54 per cent during 2005-10, the CAG said in its report for the period ended on March 31, 2010. An amount of Rs 13.45 crore out of Rs 26.40 crore released as state share during December 2007 and March 2010 for the programme in the state was utilised for construction of latrines for above poverty line families in Bihar in contravention of the guidelines, it said.

Three held for killings at MP's house in Bihar

Three people were arrested Thursday for the gunning down of three people at the house of a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP in Bihar, police said.Five gunmen barged into the house of RJD MP Umashanar Singh in Chhapra town Wednesday and opened random fire. The victims were identified as Vinod Singh, Mani Bhushan Singh and Dinesh Yadav -- all known supporters of Singh.

"Interrogation of the arrested three arrested men is on," a police official said.

Saran district Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Sunil Kumar told that police have got some breakthrough in the case.

Singh, elected to the Lok Sabha from Maharajganj, was not in his house when the attack took place. He did not rule out political conspiracy behind the incident.

Police said it appeared the attackers used AK-47s to open fire inside the house.