Bihar officer, who made cop do sit-ups, promoted

In a strange turn of events, the Bihar government has promoted the agriculture officer Manoj Kumar who, a few days back, made a cop do sit-ups for ‘daring’ to ask him to show his vehicle pass for moving during the coronavirus lockdown.

A notification in this regard was issued on Saturday evening which said that the district agriculture officer (DAO) of Araria, Manoj Kumar, has been made Deputy Director and posted at the State headquarters in Patna.

The move comes amid growing chorus from all sections of the society to penalise the agriculture officer for punishing a junior cop who was merely doing his duty during the lockdown. The Bihar DGP, Gupteshwar Pandey, who personally apologised to the home-guard jawan Ganesh Lal, had suspended the sub-inspector (S-I) Govind Singh, who had asked the junior cop to “do 50 sit-ups for ‘daring’ to ask an agriculture officer to show vehicle pass.”

The DGP assured the victim that the State Government would take action against all those, including the agriculture officer, involved in the incident.

However, Bihar’s Agriculture Minister Prem Kumar justified Manoj Kumar’s posting at the State headquarters. “The agriculture officer has been transferred from Araria to Patna so that he could not influence the on-going investigation against him in the sit-ups case,” said the minister, adding that an FIR has been registered against Manoj for his unacceptable behaviour at Araria and “action will be taken against him.”