Patna: The Bihar Police, which have slapped charges of assault, molestation and pick-pocketing on a number of minor children in recent months, have booked a three-month-old boy for looting a bus.
The child, Praveen Kumar of Nehalpur village, has been named one of the accused in the bus loot case registered at the Meenapur police station in Muzzafarpur district.
The boy's parents said he was charged following a police complaint naming him. "The boy was hardly one-and-a-half-month-old then," a relative of the boy Akal Rai, said.
"How could an infant, fed by his mother, be made accused in criminal charges by police? We submitted to the police station the birth certificate issued by the local administration but police refused to remove the infant's name from the complaint," Rai said.
The Deputy Inspector General of the Tirhut range in Muzaffarpur, Gupteshwar Pandey, said that he was unaware about the case. "If it is true that an infant has been charged with looting, I will look into it and clear charges against him soon," he added.
However, a lawyer Sudhir Ojha said: "This case speaks volumes about the sensitivity of police that can charge sheet even minors who cannot possibly have committed assault."
In recent months, police in Bihar have charged a number of minors in criminal cases, facing criticism even from courts.
Six-year-old Bimal Kumari, and eight-year-old Kamal Kumari, were charged by the Bhojpur district police with assault, loot and abuse after two years of investigations.
They have been granted bail by a court that also rapped police.
A Patna court was shocked to hear the case of five-year-old Raj Kumar, charged for not only assaulting a woman but also attempting to molest her. The court quashed the charges against him.
Police in Sasaram in Rohtas district booked a five-year-old boy on charges of pick-pocketing. When it was found that the boy was not a pickpocket, the court ordered the police official responsible for his custody to pay him compensation and also apologise to him.
Six-year-old Rani Pandey was charged by the Bhojpur district police for attacking them and helping her father escape from the police custody this year.
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