Thousands of precious old Urdu books from a library in the Bihar district of Munger were thrown into the river Ganga on Wednesday night in an incident that the district administration says was an attempt by a local businessman to encroach on the heritage building built to commemorate the massive earthquake that devastated Bihar in 1934.



“The library had more than 12,000 Urdu books and most of them belonged to pre-Independence days,” Mohammad Farooq, the library secretary, told Scroll.in over the phone.



He said that the library building has in its front four shops that have long been given up on rent. One of the shopkeepers has long been trying to encroach upon the main library building, Farooq alleged. "That night this shopkeeper and his family members broke the wall of library, took out the entire collection of books and threw them in Ganga," he said. "Now there is not a single book left in the library.”



Farooq came to know about the development early on Thursday. He quickly filed a complaint. Later, two persons belonging to the shopkeepers’ family – Yugal Kishore Verma and Naval Kishore Verma – were arrested. Four others who were named in the FIR are still at large.



“We reached the spot around eight in the morning soon after I got to know about the development and found it to be a case of a family trying to encroach upon the library building,” said Sub-Divisional Officer Kundan Kumar. “The library has mostly remained closed during last few years, and it didn’t have too many books. We did find seven or eight books on the banks of the river, but the claim of Mohammad Farooq that thousands of books were thrown in Ganga seems baseless. Perhaps a sackful of books was immersed in the river.”



The Urdu Library is of great historical significance. “After the earthquake of 1934, two libraries were set up in Munger in memory of devastation and deaths,” said Prof Sabbir Hasan, the head of the department of botany in RDNBJ College in Munger. "One of them was called Hindi Library and the other Urdu Library. Hindi Library could not survive for long, but Urdu Library has continued to exist, though it has remained mostly closed for last few years. That a library so rich in Urdu books and of such a historical significance would die in such a manner is shocking."



According to Farooq, “It was in 1940 when the building was given on lease to the library. In 1957, the shops in the front of the building were given on rent. This particular shopkeeper who ransacked the library stopped paying rent for last several years. Six months back I even filed a case in the sessions court seeking eviction of this shopkeeper, but no action was taken and the consequences are before us.”



