PATNA: A day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar agreed to sanction ₹4 lakh ex-gratia to the next of kin of people who died due to hooch, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sushil Kumar Modi stepped up his offensive against the chief minister on Tuesday and demanded that the chief minister also compensate people who suffered permanent injuries due to hooch as well and release the thousands who are in jail for violating the 2016 prohibition law.
Kumar’s decision to sanction compensation for people who died due to the consumption of hooch was a reversal of his stand on the topic; he has all along argued that the state could not give financial assistance to people who consume liquor in violation of the law. On Monday, Kumar linked the change in his stance to the fact that the deaths were mostly of poor people.
On Tuesday, Modi nudged him to look at the plight of others as well; the poor who are in jail and those who suffered permanent injuries, such as loss of eyesight due to the toxic liquor.
The senior BJP leader said it was only the poor who were arrested and convicted under the prohibition law, not the mafia. “Imagine, there is hardly any conviction of the mafia associated with liquor smuggling. As far as I know, there has been just one conviction, while over 25,000 people, mostly poor, are in jail,” he added.
Modi said the chief minister should grant a general amnesty and withdraw the criminal cases registered by the police. He said more than 4 lakh FIRs have been registered under the prohibition law since 2016, mostly for the consumption of liquor.
According to the Crime in Bihar report, law enforcement agencies in the state registered 69,124 cases under the Prohibition Act in 2021 and arrested 61,333 people including 2,874 women. The State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) does not compile statistics on how many of them were released on bail.
Only 450 cases were disposed of by the courts in 2021, according to the SCRB report. Only 205 cases, 45.6% of the decided cases, ended in conviction.
The Rajya Sabha member also recalled the observations of former Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana who described the prohibition law as an example of “lack of foresight” in drafting legislation.
The BJP leader also wondered how the government would decide on applications for the ₹4 lakh assistance. “The biggest challenge will now be how the government will decide in the absence of post-mortem reports…. Since April 2016, more than 500 liquor-related deaths are estimated to have taken place in Bihar,” he said.
Between 2018 and May 2021, there were 57,159 cases related to the prohibition law before the Patna high court including 32,909 cases for regular bail and 23,495 others for anticipatory bail. “Now, the numbers must have increased in the last two years,” he said, blaming faulty implementation of the law for the multiple problems.
Bihar BJP president Samrat Choudhary said that Nitish Kumar could not escape the responsibility for the sale of liquor in a dry state, as he holds charge of the home department. “The only objective the government works with is to hide figures of casualty, but in case of big tragedies it becomes difficult,” he added.