Four days after the Bihar government seized a suspended IAS officer's imposing mansion here, around 90-odd children from the Maha Dalit community sought a better future from the “tainted house,” now converted into a primary school as announced by the government.
On Thursday, a signboard splashed with pink was found on a balcony of the house of 1981-batch officer S.S. Verma, who was suspended in 2007 on corruption charges.
For the children, the red-lettered Devanagiri legend Prathmik Vidyalaya Runkunpura Musahari on the signboard symbolised a world far removed from their erstwhile dreary, harshly Spartan slum environs in the Musahari block.
The building was handed over to the district education officer late on Wednesday, the authorities said.Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had said the house was turned over to the Human Resource Department (HRD), which had stated it was facing an acute shortage of school buildings
With 16 cases of confiscation and property attachment in the pipeline, sources in the Special Vigilance Unit (SVU) said they expected such a confiscation to take place every month from now.
Mr. Verma, a former minor irrigation secretary, is the first such example of a civil servant whose property was attached under the Bihar Special Courts Act, 2009.
He is facing corruption charges following raids by SVU sleuths on his house on July 6, 2007.
Assets worth about Rs 1.5 crore were unearthed that time.
Mr. Verma has moved the Supreme Court following the State government's action of taking possession of his house.
The State Cabinet on Tuesday officially authorized the transfer of the property to the HRD to entail relocation of a nearby school that had no proper building.
