VISHVENDU JAIPURIAR
Hazaribag, Dec.3: A love affair between two minors involving two different castes at Gondalpura village has turned out to be a headache for the police with the girl’s mother levelling charges of kidnapping against the boy’s father, who happens to be the village Mukhiya.
The boy is the son of a local mukhiya and the girl’s father is an engineer in Gujarat. Both the boy as well as the girl were sent to the shelter home after a case landed at Barkagaon police station this February. The girl, however, escaped from the shelter home, run by an NGO, Samarpan, at Kallu chowk in Hazaribag town on November 11, along with six others.
The controversy has turned murkier after the girl’s mother knocked on the door of Chief Minister Hemant Soren yesterday blaming the boy’s father for kidnapping her daughter demanding police action failing which she threatened self immolation.
The controversy was raked up in February this year after the girl’s mother lodged a complaint against the boy. Thereafter the police arrested both of them and sent them to the correctional home. While the first was sent to a shelter home in Dhanbad, the boy was lodged in a Hazaribag shelter home.
“The girl refused to go with her parents and so we produced her in front of the child welfare committee which sent her to a shelter home in Dhanbad,” said Barkagaon sub-divisional police officer Amit Kumar Singh.
The court, however, released her after her father filed a bond that he wanted to keep her at home. The boy is still in the correctional home in Hazaribag.
However, the girl’s family again blamed the boy’s family for kidnapping her. The police recovered the girl and sent her to a shelter home on August 27. She was this time sent to a shelter home at Kallu chowk but escaped with six other girls from the shelter home and was not yet found.
Local people said this case is nothing more than an affair between two minors involving two castes namely Koeri and Yadav. They said this case is bringing bad repute for them and they also want a settlement of this case.
A police official also said that whatever charges levelled against them were wrong. “We did whatever we could,” he added.
The boy’s father said his son got bail from the court but we are not taking him out fearing another trap by the girl’s family. The efforts to contact the girl’s family were in vain.
Hazaribag SP Manoj Ratan Chauthe said Lohsigna police are probing the escape case of seven girls from a shelter home. He said out of seven, two girls were found.
