Six years on, grieving mother files case against cops

Nearly six years after her son was killed with two others, a mother in Bihar has finally gathered the courage to file a complaint against seven police officials alleging that they killed the youths in a staged shootout.

Anita Devi, mother of Manish Ranjan who was killed along with Mukul Thakur and Subodh Kumar Singh in a police shootout in 2007, has filed her complaint in the court of the chief judicial magistrate in Muzaffarpur, a lawyer said Thursday.

The complaint names seven police officials, who include four sub-inspectors.

Ranjan, Thakur and Singh were killed in a shootout near the Muzaffarpur Institute of Technology Nov 4, 2007.

"I am one hundred percent sure that the encounter was fake and police killed my son and two others who were innocent," Anita Devi told IANS over phone from Muzaffarpur, about 70 km from here.

"I have gathered the courage to approach the court for justice," she said.

She said in her petition that then sub-inspectors Amrendra Jha, Rajesh Sharma, Atanu Dutta and Akhilesh Kumar took her son from her residence on the pretext of interrogating him in connection with a case. The other three were two constables and driver of the vehicle.

"When I objected, they assured us that Manish would be released after interrogation," Anita Devi said.

She got to know what had happened only the next day when news of the shootout was flashed in the local news.

After a probe conducted at Anita Devi's request, the Bihar Human Rights Commission said the shootout was staged.

Anita Devi said compensation had been paid to her but the erring police officials were still roaming free.

Last December, the commission directed the state government to pay compensation to the victims' families. Accordingly, Rs.500,000 was last month paid to the families of each of those killed.