BJP member who mowed down 9 children and didn't even stop to help is a disgrace
An undated photo of Manoj Baitha at an event sitting next to Sushil Modi.
The BJP on February 26 suspended Manoj Baitha, the party member whose car allegedly mowed down nine children and injured several others in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district the past Saturday.
The children – six girls and three boys – were killed after Baitha's SUV ran them over on National Highway 77 when they were on their way home from school. While the Opposition has gone to town over unconfirmed reports of Baitha being drunk at the time of the accident, two things are clear from the police’s version: he was in the car when it hit the children, he chose not to stop and help.
Also, the children, students of a government school, had to cross the busy national highway every day to go home, which obviously put them at risk.
The BJP had earlier tried to distance itself from Baitha, but as outrage grew, with family members of the victims staging protests and the police registering an FIR against him, the party announced his suspension.
More than 1,10,000 people are killed annually in road accidents in India. Doctors have stated that almost 50 per cent of fatalities can be prevented if victims receive medical aid in time.
To run away after injuring anyone is unconscionable. To do it to children is especially shameful.
It is utterly deplorable that Baitha’s first concern after injuring several children was not to rush them to hospital, but to flee to safety. As a member of a political party, he was expected to show greater sense of responsibility and civic duty. While we can never know this for sure, some of the children might have survived had they received medical attention in time.
The government, run by the BJP along with the JD(U), should make sure that Baitha is traced, and faces the due course of the law.
However, that is not the only worrisome aspect of the case. Is the accident receiving more attention because the accused is a BJP leader — has this, combined with unconfirmed reports that he was drunk in a state where liquor is prohibited, given the Opposition a stick to beat the government with?
The RJD, specially, ever since it found the BJP sharing power and itself in the Opposition even after winning the people’s mandate, has been seething against the ruling JDU-BJP combine. The party has led the protests against the accident, and raised claims that Baitha was inebriated at the time of the accident. Prohibition of alcohol in Bihar was chief minister Nitish Kumar’s brainchild, and the RJD has spoken out against it in the past.
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Children's lives put at risk
It is terrible that a BJP member was involved in such a ghastly accident and did not help the victims. However, why were the children crossing the national highway at all? This was not a one-off incident, the children took the same route every day. According to government data for 2016, 34.5 per cent of all accident deaths in the country occurred on national highways.
The government middle school is located barely 50 metres from NH-77, and parents have been demanding its relocation since long.
Why was the demand not heeded? Why did the government not build a foot-over bridge for students to cross the road? Why was a bus service not provided to them?
The children, by being forced to cross the busy national highway, were being put at risk every day. While the accused being a BJP member has brought the case greater scrutiny, it might otherwise have become just another road accident statistics.
The conduct of the Opposition over the accident has been far from ideal. The focus has totally been on embarrassing the BJP to the maximum possible extent, instead of trying to help the victims and their families, or to making sure that the school is shifted from its present location.
Also, if reports of Baitha being drunk are true, it further calls into question Bihar’s prohibition policy. Reports suggest that despite the ban, liquor smuggling continues in the state.
The Patna High Court has highlighted that the police has not shown “application of mind” and taken “insensitive nature of action” while dealing with cases under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act.
While the Baitha case at present has many unanswered questions, hit-and-run cases are far from uncommon in India. The tragedy should serve as a wake-up call for the government and the civil society to take steps to arrest this trend.