Jaipur, August 14 (Hindustan Times): A Rajasthan court on Wednesday acquitted six men accused of lynching dairy farmer Pehlu Khanin Rajasthan’s Alwar on April 1, 2017. The hearing in the case had concluded on August 7.
The district court’s judgment came less than ten days after the Rajasthan Assembly passed a bill providing for life imprisonment and a fine up to Rs 5 lakh to convicts in cases of mob lynching involving the victim’s death.
Fifty-five-year-old Pehlu Khan was attacked by alleged cow vigilantes in Alwar on the Jaipur-Delhi national highway, whenhe and five others were transporting cattle from a weekly market in Jaipur to their village in Nuh, Haryana. Khan died in the hospital on April 3, 2017.
Khan’s family had alleged injusticeand protested state government’s move to charge-sheet him for cow smuggling.
On the basis of Khan’s statement, the police registered cases against suspects Om Yadav (45), Hukum Chand Yadav (44), Sudhir Yadav (45), Jagmal Jagmal Yadav (73), Naveen Sharma (48) and Rahul Saini (24) and more than 200 unnamed people.
After an investigation by the crime branch of the state police, the six were given a clean chit and charge sheet was filed against six others — Vipin Yadav, Kalu Ram, Dayanand Yadav, Ravindra Kumar, Yogesh Kumar, Bheem Rathi and Deepak alias Golu Yadav. These six men were charged them with murder, rioting, destruction of property, wrongful restraint and theft.
The state police presented charge sheet against these six men, all of whom were released on bail between July and September 2017.
The Rajasthan police alsoregistered a case against Khan and his sons, 25-year-old Irshad and 22-year-old Arif, for alleged cow smuggling on April 1, 2017 itself. The charge sheet in the case was filed on May 29 this year.
In a twist to the case, the Rajasthan police in July said they would reinvestigate the cow smuggling case against three people including two sons of Pehlu Khan, after the court gave them the go-ahead for it.
Inspector general (Jaipur range) S Sengathir said they had filed an application on July 5 in the court of additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) in Behror seeking permission to reinvestigate the case.
Irshad and Arif had moved an application in the court on July 5 pointing out that the police investigation ignored certain facts in the case.
(The featured image at the top shows lynched 51 year old Pehlu Khan’s grave)
