A Muslim family was allegedly beaten up by a mob in a village near Madhya Pradesh’s Indore city, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.
Members of the family alleged that they were attacked for not vacating their home in Kampel grampanchayat after threats from the group.
The mob, shouting “Jai Shri Ram”, descended on their home on Saturday night and hit them with rods, the newspaper reported.
“They began hitting my father repeatedly and when my uncle intervened they beat him also saying we had asked you to vacate or else face dire consequences,” Shahrukh Geyasuddin told The Indian Express.
The man’s father Farukh Geyasuddin said the attackers claimed to be the members of Hindutva groups and the Bharatiya Janata Party, according to The Wire.
The family makes agricultural equipment to earn money, according to the newspaper.
Geyasuddin’s sister Fauziya alleged that the attackers used those tools to attack the family. “They hit my uncle with a stone,” she said in a video posted on Twitter. “He had to get stiches on his head. My father is a diabetes patients. He was attacked with iron rods.”
The woman alleged that the attackers broke her phone as she was recording a video of the incident.
The village where the incident took place is dominated by the Hindu community, according to The Wire.
The Geyasuddin family had moved there two years ago. They rented a house first and were planning to buy some land nearby to build their own home.
“When the same men had come last month and asked us to leave, they knew that we were about to purchase a plot near our house,” Shahrukh Geyasuddin told The Indian Express. “They did not like it and told us “we will get more of our kind to come and settle here”.”
Shahrukh Geyasuddin said his family did not go ahead with the purchase because of threats from the men. “But the sarpanch [village head] assured us that they were just young blood and there was nothing to worry about and so we did not vacate the house,” he added.
After Geyasuddin approached the police, they filed a First Information Report against nine people. However, no arrests have been made yet.
Soon after this, a man named Vikash Singh filed a complaint against the family, alleging that they had failed to deliver to him a tractor trolley for which he had paid them Rs 75,000, according to The Wire. “Dispute over money led to the violence,” the man claimed.
Based on Singh’s complaint, the police filed an FIR against the family.
“The Geyasuddin family was given some money by the other group to build a trolley but neither did they make the trolley nor did they return the money which prima facie appears to have triggered the incident and the two groups have clashed,” Sub-inspector Vishwajeet Tomar was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
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