Bihar bandh hits normal life

The Bihar bandh on Thursday paralysed rail and road traffic thereby hitting normal life in most parts of the state.

The bandh call was given by Left parties including the CPI, CPM, CPI-ML and Forward Bloc to protest Muzaffarpur shelter home incident in which 34 girls, out of 44 inmates, were sexually abused. The other non-NDA parties like the RJD and the Congress extended their support to the bandh.

As a consequence, all the private schools in Patna remained closed on Thursday. The bandh supporters later forced shopkeepers to down their shutters. While government offices functioned in a normal way, some of the commercial establishments had to shut down for a few hours in the day.

Movement of trains was affected on Patna-Gaya route when a passenger train was stopped at Jehanabad. Similarly, National Highway-31 and 33 were blocked by the protesters. Another highway near Nawada, which connects Bihar with Jharkhand, was blocked by the agitators. In Bhojpur, the Koelwar bridge was blocked, thereby disrupting vehicular traffic between Patna and Ara.

There was no violence during the agitation, although there were reports of skirmishes between the protesters and the police.

“The bandh call was unnecessarily given as the government has already ordered a CBI probe into the Muzaffarpur rape incident,” said JD (U) spokesperson Ajay Alok.