Patna: All they wanted were chocolates but alas their poor parents couldn’t afford that. They thought they could just pick them up from a local grocery shop and relish, not knowing they have to pay the price. And the price they paid — which might have left a lifelong scar on the hapless five children, aged between eight and 12 years.After the five poor children were caught stealing the chocolates from the grocery shop at a Sitamarhi village, they were allegedly stripped naked, their faces smeared with lime powder, garlands of shoes hung around them and then they were tied together with a rope before being paraded through the streets on Thursday. Soon after a video of the gruesome punishment went viral on social media, police swung into action and arrested three people — shopowner Nageshwar Sharma, his son Prakash Kumar and a local villager, Krishna Kumar.“An FIR was lodged against them and they were sent to jail on Friday. The children were subjected to inhumane treatment on the charge of stealing chocolates by the shopowner, but the latter never informed the police about the thefts in his shop, including those in the past, as claimed by him,” Sitamarhi (sadar) subdivisional police officer Ram Krishna told the TOI on Friday, adding they are also initiating legal action against a media person who recorded the video and made it viral without following the established protocol in such a sensitive matter.In the video, the shopowner, holding a stick, is purportedly heard saying, “They (children) have stolen goods from my shop. I can’t exactly say how long they have been committing the thefts.”But the children said this was their first theft. “We stole a few chocolates only this time,” one of the children said. But the rest of the children remained silent, unsuccessfully trying to hide their faces.Strangely, this was not the first time that children were bullied on theft charges in the state. In Feb last year, a total of 122 students were told to visit a nearby temple and swear in the name of the deities after just Rs 35 went missing from the purse of a schoolteacher, Neetu Kumari in Banka district. The schoolteacher, posted at a primary school in Rajaun block’s Asmanichak, had asked a student to bring a water bottle from her purse, but when she checked her purse later, she found the money missing. No student gave a convincing reply when she inquired about it. The education department acted swiftly by removing the teacher from the school.