NEW DELHI: A woman’s quest to find love out of marriage has met with Taliban-style punishment by her husband in Bihar’s Motihari.
The woman, a mother of two children, was subject to public flogging after she was caught in a compromising position with her lover at a village in Ramgadhva area of Motihari district.
Many residents of Sarkar village had been following their movement with suspicion and found the man, Pintu, also a local, with the woman at her home when her husband was away.
They dragged the duo out of her residence, tied them to a pole and called her husband as youngsters filmed the couple pleading to the crowd for mercy.
Her angry husband beat them up with a stick and when he got exhausted, he made them beat each other in front of their weeping children. He then called a barber and got their heads tonsured.
Later, the husband and his close-ones realized that he could face consequences if the matter reached authorities and tried to suppress the matter. An overnight panchayat was called and those who filmed the barbaric act were made to delete the videos. However, many of the videos had already made their way to social media platforms and were going viral.
Superintendent of police (SP) Kantesh Mishra said that the police were investigating the case based on the videos circulating online. “No one is allowed to take law into their own hands,” he said.
The case has now attracted the attention of the National Commission for Women (NCW), which has taken a suo motu cognizance and sought a detailed report from the Bihar police chief.
Opposition BJP alleges that the crime has sharply increased in Bihar and people no longer fear law since chief minister Nitish Kumar broke away with it and joined hands with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) last year.