Barely a fortnight after images of policemen dragging an alleged criminal tied to a motorcycle in Bhagalpur shocked the nation, two more cases of street justice have been reported in Bihar.

While three men accused of stealing a motorcycle were brutally assaulted and one had his eye “gouged out” in Gaya district on Sunday, in nearby Nawada, two minors accused of stealing detergent packets from a shop were beaten up and paraded on the streets with their heads partly shaved.

According to reports, on Sunday evening, three youths intercepted Mahendra Prasad and looted his motorcycle at gunpoint near Sirdala in Nawada district and fled towards adjacent Gaya. Prasad immediately called up his relatives living nearby, who caught up with the youths near Telgee village in Gaya district and beat them up.

The right eyeball of one of the three, Pinku Singh, was allegedly gouged out by the mob. Later in the evening, Sirdala police rescued the youths, all in their late teens, from the village and admitted them in the local government hospital, after which they were sent to Nawada.

Rajauli Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashok Kumar Singh, however, strongly denied reports that the eyes of the three had been gouged out by the mob or pierced with a sharp weapon. “They were brutally assaulted and, in the process, the right eye of one of them was badly damaged,” Singh told The Indian Express over phone.

He also added that all the three—Pinku, Guddu Singh and Saket Kumar—were known troublemakers. Two FIRs, one for the motorcycle theft and the other against unknown villagers, have been lodged, Singh said.

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