'Bicycle Thief' in the making in Bhagalpur

image source:indiatimes

There could hardly be anybody who would not be moved by the pathetic condition of Antonio who gets beaten up by the mob while trying to steal a bicycle, in Bicycle Thief, a vintage movie set in post-war Europe. In the movie, Antonio, the protagonist, who is caught in abject poverty lives in a time of widespread unemployment. He learns about the job of a poster man which is meant only for persons having bicycles. Having his own bicycle stolen and the responsibility of his wife and son weighing on him heavily, Antonio is left with no other choice but to steal a bicycle. When he does it quite unprofessionally, the crowd beats him up back and blue while his kid watches him helplessly with tears rolling down his cheeks.
The emotion could not be any different when one watched TV footages of a youth fastened to a two-wheeler being dragged on the road by a policeman in Bhagalpur, Bihar, on Tuesday. Mohd Aurangajeb, the victim was punished in such a brutal way by the police for his petty crime - snatching a gold chain. He was then dumped on to a cycle cart to be carried to a police station instead to a hospital. The man who was begging for mercy was roughed up by the people all along. The people who meted out `criminal justice’ to the chain-snatcher seemed to be exalted over their `valiant’ efforts, as though they had won a Napoleonic war. Soon, the police, the custodians of law, joined the barbaric act by dragging the bleeding youth along the road.
Aurangajeb who appeared to be a confused illiterate is an autorikshaw driver and has a sister to look after as his parents are no more (going by the TV reports).
Astonishingly, Bhagalpur DIG, G N Sharma defended the act saying that the police had done a good job by rescuing the thief from the mob. According to him, Aurangajeb was fastened to a motorcycle to prevent him from escaping and he accidentally fell down and got dragged only for some distance.
Echoing similar opinion, Anil Sinha, another senior police officer, questioned the attitude of the people who took law in their hands. In an apparent bid to defocus the attention on the police brutality, he talked about the `plummeting values’ in the `civilized society’ in asked “where we are heading to?”.
More interesting was the statement of Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav who said it was the ‘Jungle Raj’ of Nitish Kumar government, and talked of increasing corruption, loosening law and order! It is not sure if the former Bihar CM made such a criticism after watching the news as nobody saw the hand of the government in the barbaric incident except the police atrocity.
Bhagalpur has a history of police atrocities since the time of Laloo. But no officials and politicians talk about it. And now, there are fears that the Bhagalpur incident could turn out to be a communal issue as the victim belongs to a minority community.
A still from `Bicycle Thief'. image source: moviediva