Hindu complainants at the police station were threatened by Muslims and compelled to agree to their cases being compromised. Hindus were openly addressed as malauns and kafirs. It was reported on 13 May that a Hindu woman of Dharmapur village had been rescued while being abducted by Muslims. On 16 May abduction was unsuccessfully attempted on two Hindu women. As a reaction to the Noakhali riots, riots rocked Bihar towards the end of 1946. Severe violence broke out in Chhapra and Saran district between 25 and 28 October. Between 30 October and 7 November, mass communal massacres in Bihar brought Partition closer to inevitability. Very soon Patna, Munger and Bhagalpur also became the sites of serious turbulence. Begun as a reprisal for the Noakhali riot, this rioting was difficult for authorities to deal with because it was spread out over a large area of scattered villages, and the number of casualties was impossible to establish accurately: "According to a subsequent statement in the British Parliament, the death-toll amounted to 5,000. "The Statesman"'s estimate was between 7,500 and 10,000; the Congress party admitted to 2,000; Mr. Jinnah [the head of the Muslim League] claimed about 30,000." However, by 3 November, the official estimate put the number of deaths at only 445. Writing in 1950, Francis Tuker, who at the time of the violence was General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command, India, put the Muslim death toll between 7,000 and 8,000. Severe rioting also took place in Garhmukteshwar in United Provinces, where a massacre occurred in November 1946 in which "Hindu pilgrims, at the annual religious fair, set upon and exterminated Muslims, not only on the festival grounds but in the adjacent town" while the police did little or nothing; the deaths were estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000.