New Delhi: Rajasthan Police may have filed a closure report giving a clean chit to six accused in the lynching of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan near Rajasthan’s Alwar, but his family in Nuh, Haryana has not received any closure.
Irshad Khan, Pehlu’s son who was an eyewitness to his father’s lynching, has vowed to approach the Supreme Court if justice is not meted out.
Pehlu’s neighbor Azmat Khan, who was also beaten up along with him on April 1 this year, has also raised doubts on the police investigation.
Azmat claimed that he and the other eyewitnesses were never given the opportunity to identify the accused. A total of 7 men were arrested since April in connection with the lynching. Earlier this month, the fifth of seven accused received bail from the Rajasthan High Court.
“These were the same people on that day. Their names were even a part of my father’s statement. It is only due to pressure that they have been acquitted. We will go to the Supreme Court if justice is not meted out. We won’t stop till all 15 of them (accused) are in jail,” Irshad said.
He added, “Not a single leader, or even a cop, visited our house after the incident. I lost my father in the attack. They took our cows, stole our money and broke the vehicle we were travelling in. To this day, not a single penny has been given to us.”
Azmat told News 18, “Who chehre main zindagi bhar nahi bhool sakta (I can never forget those faces in my life). It has been five months since that horrid day when Pehlu Bhai was beaten to death, police have even closed the investigation against those six men and to this day, we have not been summoned to identify the accused.”
“I have serious doubts over the way police have carried out this investigation. Something is seriously wrong with the probe,” he added.
On April 1, Pehlu, along with four others had gone to a cattle fair in Jaipur and was returning to Haryana with two cows. “We booked a mini-truck to transport the cows and had all the necessary paperwork. We are milkmen and we know the entire process well. I was with Pehlu Bhai and the hired driver in the mini-truck and his sons were following us in their own car. Somewhere near Behror, a group of men stopped us. First they told the driver, who was a Hindu, to run away and then they started beating us up. They even tore the permission papers we had.”
Azmat said they were able to name the accused in the FIR because the men beating them up were referring to each other by name.
“The whole scene went on for hours and a huge crowd had gathered. Nobody lifted a finger to help us. When the police came, they took us in an ambulance to the hospital and that was where our statements were recorded,” he said.
“During the incident, the men proclaimed proudly that they were members of the Bajrang Dal. They were referring to each other by their names and I made it a point to remember all of them. However, since then, the police have never asked us to identify them. If I just saw their faces once, I could identify them instantly. Pehlu bhai succumbed to his injuries in the hospital but those of us left behind will continue to fight for justice,” he added.
After the attack, police recorded Pehlu’s statement in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Behror’s Kailash Hospital. An FIR was registered against Om Yadav (45), Hukum Chand Yadav (44), Sudhir Yadav (45), Jagmal Yadav (73), Naveen Sharma (48) and Rahul Saini (24) were booked in addition to 200 unnamed accused.
On September 1, the Rajasthan CID-CB asked Alwar Police to remove these six from the list of accused.
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