The Raipur police on June 22 made the first arrest in connection with the ‘lynching’ of three cattle transporters from Uttar Pradesh in Arang, on the outskirts of Raipur. Harsh Mishra, 23, was part of the group that had allegedly assaulted the men and chased them, after which the three were found lying below the Mahanadi bridge in the early hours of June 7.
Additional Superintendent (Raipur Rural) Kirtan Rathore confirmed the arrest and said that Mr. Mishra, a resident of Raipur, worked in a cement factory. A police statement added that fearing his arrest, Mr. Mishra had been hiding in a house belonging to a friend in Brosi, Durg district, and had locked the room from the outside to mislead investigators.
Asked how Mr. Mishra was identified, Mr. Rathore said that he was among those who chased the truck in which the trio was travelling and local inquiries as well as phone location had established his presence at the spot.
When asked if the police had established how many people had been involved in the attack, Mr. Rathore replied in the negative and said they were verifying the different names that had cropped up during the investigation.
He also said that Mr. Mishra had no previous involvement in any such crime nor was he linked to any Right-wing organisation, an allegation Qureshi’s family had levelled repeatedly.
While family members of the three deceased men — Saddam Qureshi and his cousin Chand Miya Khan both from Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district, and Guddu Khan, 35, from Shamli district — said that they had been chased down and assaulted by a mob, the police continued to remain tight-lipped about the exact sequence of events of the night. With Qureshi succumbing to his injuries on June 18, the investigations had hit a fresh roadblock, even as the police had maintained all along that they were checking video footage.
Culpable homicide
In a related development disclosed on Saturday, Mr. Rathore said that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case had changed the section invoked, from Section 307 (murder attempt) to Section 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), before Qureshi’s death. Legal experts had pointed out the discrepancy in probing the deaths of Guddu and Chand as culpable homicide not amounting to murder and Qureshi’s as an attempt to murder despite the injuries caused under identical circumstances. Mr. Rathore clarified that all three deaths would now be investigated as culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
Meanwhile, with police officials saying Mr. Mishra’s custody was not required yet, he was remanded to judicial custody after being produced before a Magistrate court on Saturday.
Several Muslim organisations had joined the bereaved families in demanding justice for the three deceased men and had questioned the alleged police inaction in the case. On June 16, around 50 people carried out a protest march to Raj Bhavan, demanding justice. It was followed by a bigger protest in Raipur in which hundreds of people from the community participated; they submitted a written complaint to the Additional District Magistrate demanding immediate arrest of those involved in the “mob lynching”.
