Pehlu Khan
The gloom is palpable in Jaisinghpur, a serene village about 15km from Nuh in Haryana near the Rajasthan border. It has been six months since Pehlu Khan, 55, a native of the village, was allegedly killed by cow vigilantes. The pain his family and villagers felt has now turned to despair and resentment, as the Rajasthan Police recently decided to close the investigation against six of the accused.
Khan’s family, which kept livestock, wanted to start a dairy farm, and he had gone to Jaipur to buy milch cows for the farm. On April 1, while returning with the cattle, he was attacked, at Behror near Alwar in Rajasthan, on the Jaipur-Delhi National Highway. His son Irshad, 24, and four others were with him. They had all valid documents. Khan died two days later, after giving his statement to the police. He had heard the attackers calling out to each other and he gave the police 15 names he heard. Though the police booked the victims under the stringent cow protection laws, they were later acquitted by the Alwar sessions court.
The attack was videotaped, though it is not clear who recorded the video. But it created a controversy on social media. Later, 15 attackers were identified and most of them were members of right-wing outfits. Seven of them were arrested and the police put up a lookout notice for six. The other two are minors. One of the identified was a staff at the hospital where the victims were taken. There were allegations that timely treatment was denied to the victims. The injured were allegedly slighted as thieves and slaughterers at the hospital.
Khan’s family feels let down by the legal system. Irshad said a lawyer at Jaipur High Court agreed to take up the case for a fee of Rs 1.10 lakh. The villagers were ready to crowdfund. But the lawyer backed out. Another lawyer took Rs 52,000 and appeared for the victims. But Irshad said he cheated them. When the judge asked whether an accused seen standing with a club near Khan in the video was beating him or helping him, the lawyer remained silent and the accused got bail. Now, four more are out on bail and the bail application of the other two are in the High Court. Irshad said the family had been getting threats. “The accused are all influential, and even our lawyers are being threatened,” he said. Some NGOs that offered help later backed out.
In July, the case was given to a special team of the Crime Branch-Crime Investigation Department. It was the fourth team assigned to investigate the case in as many months. The CB-CID team gave a report that there was no proof to book the six who were absconding. Based on this, they were cleared of all charges. According to the report, the six men have been cleared on the basis of witness statements and mobile phone records. The witness, a staff at a cow shelter 4km from the attack site, said all the six accused were present at the shelter when the incident took place. But the cow shelter is patronised by one of the accused, Jagmal Yadav.
“If none of them are culprits where are my father’s killers? I myself got beaten by these people,” said Irshad. “I heard them call one another the names my father told the police. Why didn’t the police call me for a clarification before giving them clean chits?”
The family and the village have decided to fight the battle on their own till its end. “We want to get the case shifted out of Rajasthan,” said Irshad. “We believe in the Supreme Court, we are confident of getting justice if a Supreme Court-monitored investigation takes place.”
