“People were trying to help me lift the man from a pit where he was lying unconscious after being thrashed by the villagers.”
That’s what investigating officer in the Hapur lynching case, Ashwani Kumar, told The Quint after facing condemnation on social media over a viral picture. The UP Police, on 21 June, apologised for the incident and said that Kumar, along with the two other police officers seen in the picture, have now been transferred to Police Lines.
In the picture that surfaced from Hapur – in which a Muslim cattle trader, Qasim, was lynched over suspicion of cow slaughter – the victim is seen being dragged by locals in the presence of three policemen.
He (Qasim) was weighty so we couldn’t lift him from the pit. The locals were trying to help us pick him and shift him to the car. The place where he was lying in was too narrow for a car to pass. Somehow, nobody took a picture when all of us were trying to carry him on our shoulders.Ashwani Kumar, Investigating Officer
Kumar is the man who is seen raising his hand in response to the picture being taken. Though The Quint has visited the spot where the brawl erupted, we couldn’t verify the exact spot at which this viral photo had been taken in order to ascertain whether a car could indeed have passed through.
The Uttar Pradesh police apologised after facing staunch criticism over social media. In a statement posted on their official Twitter handle, the UP police said, “This picture seems to have been taken when the Police had reached the spot to shift the injured to a Police Vehicle & because of the non-availability of an ambulance at that moment, the victim was unfortunately carried this way. Admittedly, the Policemen should have been more sensitive in their conduct.”
Earlier in the day, Kumar and UP Police was subjected to hostile comments on Facebook and Twitter.
A meeting of the villagers in the Hindu-dominated Bhajera Khurd was called on Thursday, 21 June, by the police to plead for peace in the area after the lynching left bare its fault lines with the nearby Muslim populated Madapur.
Qasim and another man from Madapur village, Samiuddin were dragged for a distance of about 500 m and thrashed after rumours of cattle slaughter spread in the Hindu dominated Bhajera Khurd village. While Qasim succumbed to his injuries, Samiuddin is still fighting for his life in Dev Nandini hospital in Hapur.
In another video that had flooded social media, Qasim can be seen lying on the ground with bruises and torn clothes, pleading for water. A voice in the video can be heard saying, “If we’d reached here some time later, they would have killed the cows,” another voice can be heard saying.
Despite the video and the people from both the villages claiming that the dispute was over cattle, the police maintained that it is a case of “road rage.”
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