Turmoil in Bihar house over forced prostitution in remand home

PATNA: Bihar assembly on Wednesday witnessed uproarious scenes over alleged torture of inmates of a women’s remand home here by authorities to force them into prostitution.As soon as the house assembled for the day, RJD’s Shyam Rajak and others wanted to know the fate of their notice of adjournment motion to discuss the matter which was published on Tuesday in a local Hindi daily.As speaker Uday Narain Chaudhary disallowed Rajak from speaking, agitated rjd members including Rajesh Singh, Akhtar-ul-Iman, Sunil Kumar Pushpam and others trooped into the well raising slogans against the state government.Slogans like ‘death to Nitish Kumar government’, ‘down with the government of batons and bullets’, were heard as the speaker ruled that as per norms of parliamentary democracy no adjournment motion could be accepted during the budget session of the house.“I am deeply concerned that the members are not adhering to parliamentary norms,” he said requesting the RJD MLAs to return to their seats and began taking up questions despite the noise. Replies by ministers to short notice questions were hardly audible in the din.After nearly 20 minutes of slogan-shouting, the RJD MLAs returned to their seats following an assurance by the chair that he would announce his ruling on the notice after the question hour. The matter was raised once again by Rajak during Zero hour and the speaker ruled that the notice for adjournment motion was rejected for not being in order, plunging the house into chaos.Leader of the opposition Rabri Devi, Rajak and others were seen waving copies of the daily and engaging in heated arguments with the chair.Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said he had gone through the newspaper report and asked the concerned officers to go into its veracity and inform him.“I have directed the concerned officers, including the secretary of the social welfare department to go into the matter and submit a report.I have also asked a person from the newspaper house, which has claimed it has recorded evidence of the alleged torture, to make it available to me and I assure you that appropriate action will be initiated against the guilty after a thorough inquiry,” he said.Order was then restored in the house, which then took up other listed business.The notice alleged that the remand home authorities at Gaighat, including its Superintendent had assaulted the inmates on Sunday after they refused to join a prostitution racket at their bidding.It said though a committee was constituted to look into the prostitution racket being run by the remand home authorities after a complaint was received a few months ago, no step was taken to check it.