By IANS,
Patna : Twenty days after the abduction of six-year-old Ankit, special prayers were offered Wednesday by children at a temple and a mosque in the Bihar capital seeking divine blessings for his safe recovery.
Bihar police have failed to make any breakthrough despite repeated assurances to Ankit’s parents that police investigations were on the right track and he would be recovered soon.
Ankit, a lower kindergarten student, was abducted on April 12 from outside St. Paul’s School in Gaighat locality here. His father Manoj Kumar Gope is a small-time businessman who also runs a beauty parlour.
Dozens of children and elders joined special prayers (hawan-puja) at a temple Wednesday for the safe release of Ankit. They chanted verses from Hindu holy books and offered rituals for his safe return.
“We have organised special prayers after the police failed to recover him (Ankit),” said a member of Bihar Public School and Children Welfare Association (BPSCWA).
A group of Muslim children too offered prayers for Ankit’s safe recovery. “We prayed to God for his safety and return,” said Mansur Qadir, a student of an Islamic seminary in Samanpura, a Muslim-populated locality here.
More than the police, what upset Ankit’s parents and relatives more was that influential public bodies including NGOs were yet to launch a protest to put pressure for his safe recovery.
“Only opposition parties have raised the issue. Public bodies and NGOs like Oxygen, who used to protest against abductions during the previous government of Rabri Devi, have not bothered to take up the case of Ankit’s abduction,” said the boy’s visibly upset father.
Frustrated over repeated assurances by police that they would find her son, Poonam Devi said: “We have no faith in the police finding him. If my son is not rescued I will immolate myself.”
Angry over police failure to trace the boy, traders and businessmen of Patna held a protest rally and closed their shops in April. Schoolchildren and teachers too joined the protest.
Leader of Opposition Rabri Devi said that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had promised to make Bihar a crime-free state within three months when he came to power in November 2005, but he had failed miserably. “Nobody is safe in the state, if the spate of abductions, murders, loot and extortions are anything to go by,” she said.
“Now, instead of checking lawlessness and the spate of abductions, Nitish Kumar has been making false promises of development by laying foundation stones daily,” said Congress leader Premchand Mishra.
The chief minister had asked top police officials to find the missing boy soon. However, the two special police teams that were formed to trace Ankit returned from Chapra and Muzaffarpur districts without success.
Four people have been detained for interrogation, said Patna’s senior superintendent of police Kundan Krishnan. Police say they have also zeroed in on a domestic servant, Balram Paswan, who has been missing since Ankit’s abduction.
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 between Jan 1 and March 31. January accounted for 333 abductions, February for 361 and March for 209.
According to officials, over 2,000 kidnappings occurred in 2006 alone.
Bihar’s kidnapping industry is clearly thriving. Lawyers, doctors, contractors, businessmen and school students have been the prime targets of abductors for ransom.