July 13 2008;

(IANS) A young housewife was dragged out of a train in Bihar and allegedly raped by some miscreants on way to her in-laws' place here, the city police said on Sunday. The woman, who lives at her in-laws' place in Narkeldanga of North Kolkata, was returning by train on Friday with her eight-month-old son after a short visit to her parental home in Bihar's Seikhpura district.

April 20 2009;
Girl dragged out of train, gangraped

CHHAPRA: A teenaged girl was dragged out of a train at Bihar's Chhapra Junction in full public view and gangraped at a nearby medical shop by four youth in the wee hours of Friday. One of the rapists has been arrested. Seventeen-year-old Punita (name changed), along with her father, was on her way back home near Thawe in Gopalganj from Chhapra where her uncle lives. The duo boarded the Chhapra-Thawe passenger train stationed on the meter gauge around 12 midnight.

This is the "new" and "safe' Bihar that everyone is talking of. I am no Bihar baiter and neither am I a Lalu Yadav fan but what really caught my attention lately was the fact that the entire nation was suddenly talking about the way changes have been brought into the state which has traditionally been ridiculed for the poor state, of not just its security apparatus, but almost everything that it provides.

I have seen the pathetic condition of roads, have borne the brunt of long power cuts and have completely felt miserable and helpless at the way people scurry into their homes as soon as darkness falls.

This, however, I am told is a thing of the past. And this I have learnt not just from media but also from my parents who still live in Muzaffarpur, a town that lies about 80 km north of Bihar's capital city Patna. I have not visited Bihar in over two years now and my father tells me that things have changed for the better. Malls have come up and the kidnappings have reduced. I, however, disagree with him as I always found him to be an optimist who even in the 'worse' days of Bihar said that things would change for the better and refused to leave the state and move to Gujarat where half of my family has migrated.

I remember how my mother would tell me over the phone that the power situation has improved, only to discover later that instead of 20 hour power cuts, there would be an 18 hour power cut. So the improvement would mean the two extra hours of power supply.

And when I heard everyone talking of how Nitish Kumar, the current Bihar Chief Minister has brought about change, for a moment even I wanted to believe that I am being cynical for no reason and that may be my father's dreams have actually come true.

But, just then I recalled the incident that I had read a few months back and a quick search on the net threw up another similar incident. A 14-year-old girl had been dragged out of a train and gang raped in front of her father. This incident is not very old and a similar incident happened about a year back and just then I wondered if things have really changed.

Patna based think tanks have also lauded what the current government has done but I wonder if they have considered these incidents. I wonder what these think tanks said when the previous government had existed and whether they had ever criticized the Lalu-Rabri governments. If they had, why didn't I ever that criticism. Where have these think tanks sprung up from?

Returning back to the two incidents of gang rape, all I want to know is that how can a state where women are dragged out of a train and raped, claim to be "safe". It simply means that things are rotting to such an extent that criminals act with total impunity and nothing deters them. It simply goes to show that the government may have changed but the mindset hasn't. The feudal mindset still makes people think that they can treat women the way they want and get away with it. The incident may be shrugged off as an aberration but there can't be two aberration within a year.

If any government can assure safety of women, then perhaps we can truly talk about Bihar having turned the tide.