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A Muslim man who was transporting cows near the Rajasthan-Haryana border was shot dead allegedly by vigilantes while two of his aides were injured after being thrashed reported TV 18 today. No FIR had been registered yet by the Rajasthan police, reports indicate. Another Killing by Gau Rakshaks, This Time Victim Was Shot Dead not beaten!:
The incident took place in Fahari village near Govindh Gadh in Alwar district of Rajasthan on November 10. Sources said Ummar Muhammad and the two others were transporting cows from Mewat in Haryana to Bharatpur in Rajasthan but they were waylaid by the mob and assaulted.
While police remained tight-lipped about the incident, official sources confirmed that Ummar died of a bullet wound. His body has been kept in a mortuary at Shehr hospital. He is survived by his wife and eight children. The two others got minor injuries and ran away from the scene. One of them, Tahir Muhammad, got himself admitted at a hospital near the state border and the other person was there with him.
Yet again, the Muslim Mewat community is the target and the incident has sent ripples in the Mewat community, with residents launching a protest. Relatives of the victim alleged that policemen too were present when the crime took place but did nothing to stop the attackers. They have demanded immediate arrest of the accused, but two days after the murder, no FIR in the case has been registered so far.
Sher Muhammad, chairman of the Meo Panchayat of Alwar, told the media that villagers claimed the people who fired the bullets were not in any uniform. “The attack took place at around five in the morning. We are calling it a case of lynching too as they have not only been shot but also beaten up. We will press charges accordingly,” said Muhammad. The Panchayat leader alleged that the killers were not done with Ummar even after shooting him dead and tried to show the death an accident by getting a moving train to run over his body. The police has been alleged to be complicit in the crime, yet again.
He said, however, that they could not dump the entire body and only his head and left limb got severed, but the body part where the bullet hit remained intact. “When the police located his body, they brought it to the Shehr Hospital mortuary. There was no investigation carried out. The family members recognised Ummar with the help of his slippers,” Sher Muhammad said.
He said the family will not take the body from the mortuary and bury it until a case is registered to make sure that Ummar’s case does not meet the same fate as that of Pehlu Khan, the dairy farmer who died after being assaulted by cow vigilantes in April this year. All six accused arrested for Pehlu’s murder were given a clean-chit by the special investigation team probing the case.
Ummar’s brother Khurshid said he came to know of the attack from villagers and does not know anything about the attackers. “We we only came to know of it today. Since then we are at the hospital. We do not know who killed him and how he was killed. There needs to be a thorough investigation,” said Khurshid.
According to an India Today report, the Meo community of the region has alleged that right-wing organisations in collusion with the police thrashed the youths. The report added that the community members have demanded a high-level probe into the incident. “The attack took place at around five in the morning. We are calling it a case of lynching too as they have not only been shot but also beaten up. We will press charges accordingly,” Sher Muhammad, chairman of the Meo Panchayat of Alwar, told News18
The latest incident come months after Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, was brutally beaten to death by cow vigilantes in Alwar district. Khan and at least four others were injured when a mob had attacked nearly 15 persons hailing from Haryana, while transporting cows in vehicles on the Behror highway in Alwar district on 5 April.
In September, the Rajasthan police had given a clean chit to the six people named in the Pehlu Khan lynching incident. Following this, Khan’s family had sought a court-monitored probe into the killing and said the case must be shifted out of the state.
Pehlu Khan’s son Irshad, who was present when the attack took place, told the media that those given a clean chit by Rajasthan Police were among the attackers. In October, the Alwar police was accused of playing into the hands of cow vigilantes when a Muslim family alleged that local police snatched their cows and handed over to a gaushala, Deccan Chronicle had reported.
Subba Khan, 45, had, the report added, alleged that local police forcibly took away his 51 cows at the behest of Hindu activists on 3 October.
“They said we were cow smugglers. When I tried to intervene, they pushed me. The police were present, but they were mere spectators. Later, with the help of the police, the cows were taken to Shri Krishna Gaushala in Bambora Ghati by the cow vigilantes,” Khan’s wife Baseri told Hindustan Times.