Patna: Four boys were beaten up, their heads shaved and then paraded in briefs before being tied to trees the whole rainy night in Bihar for allegedly harassing girls.
The villagers also seized the teenagers’ cellphones and two bikes on which they had come to the village.
Police said the 14- to 16-year-old boys allegedly began harassing girls in Bakhari, east Champaran district, on Friday when the villagers caught hold of them. Subsequently, they were beaten up badly, had their heads shaven off unevenly before being paraded through the village streets in their underpants.
Later, they were tied to trees and made to spend the whole night. Local police later rescued the boys neighbouring villages on Saturday morning.
“The boys were found tied to trees when we reached the spot acting on information provided by the victims’ families,” police official Shahshi Bhushan Kumar told media on Sunday. He said the boys had been named as accused in a case registered by the villagers. The four were sent home on bail granted by the local police station.
Villagers alleged the boys had been making rounds of the village for the past several days and were passing lewd remarks at girls, which prompted them to teach them a lesson.
The incident has sparked tension in the area. Police said the boys, too, had registered a case against the villagers for them crude punishment they had to undergo.
The cases of harassment of girls have assumed alarming proportion in Bihar in recent months. Last year, the house of an alleged a man had been set ablaze by a girl’s family in Bihar for allegedly harassing her.
There are quite few cases of girls being killed for resisting harassment or taking their own life out of shame. In January this year, an 18-year-old woman from Gopalganj district was stabbed to death for the same reason.
In September 2011, a US tourist had been assaulted when he tried to rescue his French friend in Nalanda, home district of former chief minister Nitish Kumar. The American had suffered fracture in his hands. There have been also reports of some girls committing suicide unable to bear daily trauma of harassment.
