A 28-year-old Dalit man on Friday, 19 July, sustained injuries after some people mistook him for a thief and allegedly tried to burn him alive when he entered a house to avoid stray dogs in Uttar Pradesh's Barabanki district, police said, reported PTI.
The incident took place in Deva area of Barabanki's Raghopur village.
The victim, Sujit Kumar, was rushed to Civil Hospital, Lucknow where his condition is stated to be stable. An FIR has been registered against four people under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code in this regard.
Three of the accused – Shravan, Desh Raj and Umesh Yadav – have been arrested and a hunt is on to nab the others, they said.
Police said that three of the four accused named in the FIR had been arrested.
“We have arrested three persons. We are looking for the fourth accused who we will identify and arrest soon. The condition of the victim, who is a daily wage labourer, is now stable,” Pramod Kumar Singh Singh, SHO of the Dewa police station said, according to The Indian Express.
Accused Used ‘Casteist Slurs’
Kumar was going to his in-laws house at around 2 am on Friday. He was being chased by stray dogs and he entered a house to avoid them, the police said.
The occupants of the house mistook him to be a thief. They thrashed him and tried to burn him alive by sprinkling petrol on him, superintendent of police, Barabanki, Akash Tomar, said, PTI reported.
According to the complaint, the “accused also used casteist slurs during the assault and set the youth on fire with the intention of killing him.”
In a statement to the media, Tomar said, “Parts of his back and feet are burnt. He has suffered 15 percent burn injuries.”
(With inputs from PTI and The Indian Express.)
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