Mumbai: It seemed like a perfect end to a day of sight-seeing in Bihar's world famous tourist sites in Rajgir, Nalanda and Bodhgaya, an embodiment of peace and tranquillity.
And yet when we thanked Bhiku Bodhipala, Chief Priest of Bodhgaya Temple Management Committee, for showing fellow journalist Rahi Bhide and me the temple complex, he said we should arrange police escort while returning to Patna.
Earlier, when we set out in the morning, our host, Governor of Bihar R.S. Gavai sent us off with a constable, a state employee and a driver with a warning to return before 11pm.
He had informed us that 90 per cent of Bihar's law and order problem was under control and only 10 per cent had to be tackled.
However, on Monday evening we got a taste of that 10 per cent of disorder in that state, notorious for its crime and Naxalite problem.
Silent villages
Barely 25km out of Bodhgaya at around 7:30pm, after driving through silent villages and vast fields, all of a sudden we came face to face with a gang of 20-25 screaming men, their clothes sprayed with Holi colours. They surrounded the pilot car with five policemen.
And then seeing us, they rushed to us, ordering the driver to open the door.
One of them, his face marked by anger and ferocity, thumped hard on the wind screen. It cracked and so did the driver's resolve to move ahead.
Shouting and banging on our car, they peered in seeking out vulnerable victims. By then, the policemen in the escort car jumped out swiftly to attack the hoodlums with their bayonets.
Two were caught while the rest vanished into the dark of the night. And then we spotted the gang's earlier victims - a couple crouched in a small car with a smashed windscreen. "They were looted but perhaps escaped from any physical attack since the hoodlums saw a new lucrative target in us," said one of the policemen.
Nearest station
More policemen arrived, taking away the frightened couple to the nearest police station in Pranpur where two more men travelling in their car had filed police complaints of being waylaid. We were provided additional escorts.
We had braved a visit to this state though friends and family had warned of going to a land of lawlessness, even after a change of government.
