Word: bihar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Salig Ram Saha, 17, the son of a goldsmith, had just collected 800 rupees (about $100) from one of his father's customers, when he ran into the police dragnet. In the crime-ridden state of Bihar, police assumed that the young man had stolen the cash. They took him to the Rajon police station. When he would not confess, they pinned him down to the floor and punctured his eyes with needles. Then corrosive acid was poured into the bleeding sockets. Saha, whose eyelids are completely fused shut, is one of at least 30 people who have been...
Disclosure of the Bihar police brutality-reported in detail by the Calcutta Sunday magazine-sent shock waves through India. At a heated 3½-hour session of parliament last week, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced that her government had begun an investigation of the atrocities. So far, 15 policemen and officers have been suspended, including one jail superintendent, for neglecting to note the injuries. Ironically, he had assigned attendants to help the blinded prisoners in his custody and had forwarded their petitions of complaint to Bihar's inspector general. The government has also named a team of ophthalmologists...
...some Biharis say they do comprehend. With a population of 70 million, many of them landless and impoverished, in a region roughly the size of New England, Bihar is one of India's most volatile states. It is an area bedeviled by crime, caste and religious clashes, where bandits subject people to daily terror. Many believe that some kind of firm measures by the police are necessary...