Click to play videoNew Delhi: There has been a fresh twist in the abduction and murder case of the six-year-old boy, Ankit, who was kidnapped a month back.
Police say that Ankit's abductor Balram Paswan on Thursday retracted the statement he made on Wednesday and is now saying that the six-year-old is still alive.
Ankit, whose father works as a small-time businessman from Patna, was kidnapped on April 12 from outside St Paul's School in Patna.
On the basis of Balram's confession, police had begun searching for Ankit's body in Chhapra, a few hundred kilometers away from Patna on Wednesday.
He was the latest victim of a thriving abduction industry Bihar is infamous for.
Statistics show that more than 900 people have been abducted across the state in the first three months of 2007.
Newspapers have reported a steady increase in cases of murders, loot, extortion and banditry, indicating little has changed since a new government came to power in the state in 2005.
And in the wake of a series of abductions of school students in the state, more and more people are questioning Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's claims of providing better governance.
A court report said that 903 cases of kidnappings took place in Bihar from Jan 1 to March 31. January accounted for 333 abductions, February for 361 and 209 kidnappings took place in March.
According to officials, over 2,000 people were kidnapped in 2006 alone.
Bihar's kidnapping industry is clearly thriving. Lawyers, doctors, contractors and businessmen and school students have been the prime targets of abductors for ransom.
Hundreds of well-to-do professionals have migrated to bigger cities or sent their children to boarding schools outside the state.
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