Bihar officials chary of travelling in staff cars

Bihar officials chary of travelling in staff cars
MANOJ PRASAD

RANCHI, NOV 12: The death of 26-year-old Archana Prasad has left her husband, Hazaribagh District Collector Deepak Kumar, shattered. ``I can't live without her,'' says a visibly upset Kumar. Prasad, a freelance journalist from Delhi, is the first IAS officer's wife to be killed in Bihar by suspected Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) ultras.

Archana and Kumar, a 1993 batch IAS officer of the Bihar cadre, got married in Delhi some time late last year. Archana, who was returning in her husband's Tata Sumo with relatives from Gaya after offering prayers at the Vishnupad temple there, was shot dead near Bhulal village -- between Barachatti and Chauparan in Hazaribagh area.

The incident, just four days before formation of the first Jharkhand government here, and nearly a month after Lohardaga SP Ajay Kumar Singh was shot dead on October 4, has sent shock waves in official circles.

Nobody is willing to speak out against the Naxal menace but the situation is so bad that most of them refuse to move out in their official vehicles. So much so that district officials, collectors and SPs of 14 out of Jharkhand's 18 districts dare not move in their vehicles sporting VIP lights.

``Had Ajay Kumar Singh been commuting by a bullet-proof car and not by the ordinary Maruti Gypsy, as he did while he was shot dead, he would not have died,'' points out Bihar IPS Officers' Association secretary, Arvind Pandey.

``Let there be a Commission to study and enlist evidences connected with extremism from revenue and police records, identify the culprits and recommend measures to contain them,'' Pandey says.