The brother of an additional director general of police killed in broad daylight; a woman schoolteacher smothered to death at her home; three members of a family killed in a land dispute; a police officer accused of molesting a girl; a schoolgirl "gang-raped" and a police case registered only following the intervention of the Bihar State Women's Commission.

All of that has happened in Patna over the last six months. A visiting team from the National Commission of Women also found that in Rohtas, eight girls had stopped going to school for fear of a local hoodlum.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had long been touting the improvement in law and order since the RJD and Congress days. Only last month did he admit at a meeting with police officers from the DGP to SPs: "There has been a fast deterioration in law and order of late. The public perception on improved law and order in Bihar is changing. You must stop this and the perception."

He mentioned in particular the rising crimes against women, contrasting these against measures such as 50 per cent reservation for women, bicycles to class IX girls, a literacy programme for 30-plus women and a vocational programme for Muslim women, all of which have gone into creating a "caste-neutral" constituency of women.

The rise in crime also comes at a time when the police have been patting themselves on the back for "speedy trials". The state boasts over 60,000 convictions since 2006. It was DGP Abhayanand, then additional DGP (HQ), who pushed the idea of speedy disposal; he has now been stressing "scientific investigation".

Alongside the higher conviction rate are increased crimes. The state has seen registered crimes rising through successive years, irrespective of who has been in power, if one compares the overall figures from 2001 till July this year.

Of specific crimes, kidnapping for ransom has been dropping. Murder too appears to have dipped but the number this year has been 2,182 till July alone, compared with 3,198 for entire 2011.

As for the total, government figures put the number of cognisable offences at 95,942 in 2001. This rose to 1,10,716 in 2006 (when Nitish completed a little over a year in office) and to 1,47,633 in 2011. In 2012, it has been 94,188 till July alone. For Patna, the number has risen from 9,292 in 2001 to 11,840 in 2005, 14,064 in 2007, 14,947 in 2011 and 8,778 in 2012 till July.

The rise in crimes against women has brought the government under fire. As per the government's own data, the number of rapes went up from 746 in 2001 to 1,083 in 2006, dipped to 934 in 2011 and has been 562 cases this year till July. And as per the National Crime Records Bureau, Bihar had 862 cases of human trafficking in 2011 against 679 in 2010.

"A total 56 per cent of women aged 15 to 49 are subjected to physical or sexual violence in Bihar, against the national figure of 35 per cent," said Vandana Kinni, MD, Women Development Corporation, Bihar.

Charu Walikhanna, who is in charge of the NCW in Bihar, said: "NCRB figures tell it all. We have sought a report from the Bihar government. It is time the state police became more proactive."

JNU research scholar and former Youth Congress leader Chandan Yadav and his team had brought all this up with the NCW. Yadav said: "Newspaper reports from Bihar of late have been disturbing. NCRB figures told a sad story about Bihar women."

The Opposition has targeted Nitish for "packaging his good governance with selective facts". Said Abdul Bari Siddiquei of the RJD, "The law and order improvement is just a matter of perception. Until murders, rapes and kidnapping come down, the government cannot pat itself on its back".

DGP Abhayanand cited constraints in policing, with 64 policemen per lakh population against the national 133. The government will recruit 43,000 policemen over the next five years, said deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, adding there are now dedicated women and SC/ST police stations. "What is important that we have been able to contain the fear factor. Policing is a continuous process," he said.

And Nitish said: "We can never claim we have controlled crime. We have identified land disputes as a major cause for murders. We have been doing land surveys of the entire state to address this."

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