Observing that the rise in cases of kidnapping and criminals issuing ransom threats from prisons to doctors and other professionals showed the "real face" of Bihar, the Patna High Court today directed top state officials to tighten noose around outlaws active from behind the bars and prepare an action plan to improve law and order situation.

Taking serious note of criminals making ransom threat from behind jails to doctors and other professionals, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Ravi S Dhavan and

Justice Shashank Kumar Singh directed the officials to immediately carry out a search operation and snatch mobile phones of the offenders and confine them to a lonely place in the prison so that they are completely incapacitated from taking part in criminal activities. 

The court was hearing a writ, which it converted into a petition, on a letter written by the Bihar Chapter of the Indian Medical Association drawing the chief justice's attention to incidents of doctors being targeted by criminals and requesting the court's intervention for improving the situation.

Bihar Director General of Police Narayan Mishra, Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Nayyer Hussain Khan, and other senior police officers were present in the court.

After pulling up the officials, the court adjourned the matter to Friday with a direction to the state's chief secretary, DGP, and home secretary to ponder over the deteriorating law and order situation in the state and come up with an action plan to check this trend.

 The court also instructed the officials to carry regular search in the prisons in every district to maintain discipline among inmates and seize items like mobile phones.

The bench suggested that the post of inspector general of prisons, which is currently held by an Indian Administrative Service officer, be given to an officer from the Indian

Police Service. A man in uniform will be in a better position to drive fear in the minds of prisoners breaking rules in the jails with impunity, they observed.

"What is happening in Bihar? Criminals are making ransom threat from jails, judicial functionaries are assaulted… It appears that the common man is living in shadow of fear. This shows the real face of Bihar today," the judges observed.

The IMA, in its letter to the chief justice, had pointed that around 34 doctors had been kidnapped in the state in recent past and four of them were killed. Besides, the doctors were getting regular ransom threat from criminals lodged in prison.

It may be recalled that noted neuro-surgeon Ramesh Chandra, ortho expert Bharat Singh, and many other doctors had already been kidnapped in Patna.

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