Patna: A top jail official in Bihar has been dismissed from service for arranging a grand mutton feast for a lawmaker charged with raping a schoolgirl at his residence. The incident took place last year.
Moti Lal, a senior officer from Bihar Prison Service, was fired shortly after the charges against him were found to be true during the course of investigation.
The sacked official was acting as the jail superintendent of the Biharsharif jail in Nalanda district, when the mutton party was arranged at the behest of the rapist lawmaker Raj Ballabh Yadav who is from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
Yadav was in the jail then and the feast was organised “to keep him in good humour”.
“The punishment has been handed out on the basis of the findings of a departmental proceedings committee,” a senior home department official told local media on Tuesday. According to him, the sacked jail official extended undue favour to the rapist lawmaker in flagrant violation of jail policies.
He is the fourth jail official to be sacked for helping the lawmaker in jail. Earlier the authorities fired Ram Nandan Pandit, then assistant jailor, Ram Lakhna Yadav and Ramesh Kumar, both wardens. The feast had been organised during Holi, the festival of colours, in the jail shortly after the lawmaker was sent to jail after he surrendered in a local court.
The accused lawmaker was forced to surrender after the police began the process to confiscate his properties and the local court refused to grant him bail. The accused lawmaker had been evading arrests for the past over a month since a case was registered against him in February last year.
The lawmaker who has a long controversial past shot into infamy after a grade 10 schoolgirl filed a rape case with the local police alleging how a woman lured her to attend a birthday party in the locality but later supplied her to the lawmaker. The incident triggered widespread outrage in the society with the various women organizations seeking stern action against the accused lawmaker.
