The Rajasthan Police on Friday said they had completed their investigation into the murder of a Muslim labourer in Rajsamand district and also filed a chargesheet against the accused, The Indian Express reported. “The chargesheet in the case has been filed and the documents were submitted to the court of the chief judicial magistrate here in Rajsamand,” Rajsamand SP Manoj Kumar said.
The police had arrested Shambhulal Regar on December 7, 2017, for brutally murdering Mohammed Afrazul, a labourer from West Bengal a day earlier and sharing several videos of the killing on social media. His minor nephew was detained for taking the videos, in which Regar can be heard making anti-Muslim remarks.
After his arrest, Regar had claimed that Afrazul was a perpetrator of “love jihad” – a term Hindutva groups often use to accuse Muslim men of entrapping Hindu women on the pretext of love to eventually convert them to Islam. But the Rajasthan Police refuted his allegations.
The police investigated the case for over a month. “The chargehseet is 413 pages long, and we have 68 witnesses in the case,” said Rajnagar Station House Officer Ramsumer Meena. “Evidence, both material and digital, has been cited along with the motive behind the murder.”
Regar, who is in judicial custody, was initially charged with murder and tampering evidence along. The police later added a few other sections in the First Information Report in the case –these include charges of promoting enmity between different groups on religious grounds, race, etc, committing acts prejudicial to maintaining harmony as well as malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings and criminal conspiracy.
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