Bihar’s opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal on Wednesday accused the NDA government, led by Nitish Kumar, of retaining power in the state for the last 16 years by misleading people on the crime situation.

The situation on the ground is even worse compared to the RJD rule between 1990 to 2005, the RJD claimed.

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Citing the National Crime Records Bureau report, RJD national spokesperson Mritunjay Tiwari said that the 21 cognizable crime cases took place every hour in Bihar under the Nitish Kumar government, as against 11 in the RJD’s tenure.

Similarly, two rape cases and four kidnapping cases were reported daily under the RJD, while cases, under these two categories, were four-fold higher during the Nitish Kumar government, and 1,028 cases of kidnapping for ransom is registered in 2020.

“The JD-U and BJP leaders have only one objective – to defame RJD and retain power in Bihar. They repeatedly give false statements to mislead the people of the state. The situation is worse now than it was during RJD’s tenure,” he said.

“Bihar Police registered 741 cognizable crime cases in the first four months of 2021. That means 31 cases per hour. Alarmingly, the conviction rate in Bihar is just 6.1 per cent,” Tiwari added.

His fellow spokesman Chitranjan Gagan said: “The politics of JD-U and BJP leaders are based on criticising RJD on the basis of false data and perspective. They always point out massacres happened during the RJD tenure.”

“I want to point out that massacre was started in Bihar in 1976 in Akaudi village in Bhojpur district. After that another similar incident appeared in Belchi village in Patna district in 1977, another massacre took place in Dwar Bihta in Bhojpur district in 1977, followed by Pipra incident on the same year. At that time, stalwart socialist leader Karpoori Thakur was the Chief Minister of Bihar. A section of people were wanting to remove Karpoori Thakur from the post. Hence, they were allegedly involved in massacres to defame him,” Gagan said.

“When Lalu Prasad took over the charge of Bihar in 1990, it was a period of massacres. The massacres had happened between 1990 to 2000 but during the second tenure of Rabri Devi, not a single incident of massacre was reported between 2000 to 2005. We have handed over a massacre-free state to Nitish Kumar in 2005,” Gagan said.