An angry mob in Jhurmo village in Jharkhand’s Gumla district attacked 35 people of the village over suspicion of cow slaughter, killing one and leaving three injured, The Indian Express reported.
Thirty-five villagers from Kuju’s village went to carve up a villager’s 20-year-old ox that had died in his field, when a mob, armed with rods and sticks attacked them, claiming that they had slaughtered a cow. According the The Indian Express report, most of them managed to flee but one Prakash Lakra was killed and three others were injured in the attack.
The report said that two days after the lynching, as the village was coping from the shock, the Jharkhand police booked the three injured people under the state’s bovine slaughter act and arrested two of the seven charged with the murder of Lakra.
The mob had attacked the four affected men in a field between Jhurmo and the neighbouring Jairagi village and took them to the Dumri police station. The police rushed the four tribal christians to the Community Health Centre in the Dumri block of Gumla, where Lakra was declared dead.
Peter Phuljans (50), Belasus Tirkey (60) and Janriush Minz (40) have been identified by The Indian Express as the three injured.
A doctor at the Health Centre told the daily that all three had difficulty in walking and were writhing in pain as they were beaten up on their arms, shoulder, and scapula region.
Dr Roshan Khalko alleged that the police pressured him into violating the procedure. He told TIE that when a person is brought dead, the body is first sent for postmortem. Here, however, the police pressured him into making an entry in the register.
“This can indicate that he died during treatment.”Dr Khalko, as quoted by The Indian Express
ADG ML Meena said that the three injured have been booked under the Jharkhand Bovine Animal Prohibition of Slaughter Act.
On Friday, 12 April, Block Development Officer Yunika Sharma met with Lakra’s wife, Jermine and said there is no need to be scared. “Tomorrow is Ramnavami, so, I cannot give you the names of those arrested,” Sharma was quoted by The Indian Express as telling Jermine.
However, Jermine told the daily that there has not been such a case in the village in the last 40 years.
“In the last 40 years, I never heard of anyone being murdered in our village for carving up a dead animal. The animal had died earlier, nobody killed it for food.”Jermine Lakra
Adranish Kujur, who owned the ox that had died told The Indian Express that he was not part of the group that had gone to carve up the ox.
One villager, who was part of the 35 that had went to carve up the ox, said that few people came and started beating them mercilessly with rods and whatever they could carry. “People chanted slogans and we ran for our lives. The four could not escape.”
The police have named seven men as accused in the FIR, all of them residents of the neighbouring Jairagi village.
(With inputs from The Indian Express.)