The Rajasthan Police on Wednesday said it will move an application in the High Court to cancel the bail of Vipin Yadav, who is accused of killing dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Alwar in April 2017, after he admitted his role in the crime in front of hidden cameras.
“Our first endeavour will be to take this evidence in record and carry out our own supporting investigation so this becomes admissible in the court of law,” Jaipur Range Inspector General VK Singh told NDTV. “Thereafter we will cite this evidence in the trial against the accused as well... This has made the case strong and watertight against him,” Singh said.
Yadav spoke to an investigative team from NDTV and admitted before hidden cameras that the mob assaulted Khan for over one-and-a-half hours. The NDTV team had posed as researchers doing field work on Hindutva outfits
“First there were 10 people then the crowd swelled,” Yadav had said. “They weren’t stopping their trucks, so I had to overtake them and take their keys to catch them.”
Yadav spent five months in jail after the incident. The Rajasthan High Court accepted his bail application on the grounds that there were about 200 people present at the spot, that Yadav was not named in the police complaint or First Information Report, that no specific action of his was named in the crime, and that he was not present at the spot of the crime.
Pehlu Khan’s son, Irshad Khan, told NDTV that he recognised Yadav from the video footage as the person who stopped their vehicle. “He started beating us,” Irshad Khan said.
Khan was attacked while he was transporting his cows from Rajasthan to Haryana. Although he had permits for the animals, a group of men had accused him of transporting them illegally and then assaulted him. Many of his attackers were allegedly affiliated with the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
On Monday, the Supreme Court also agreed to hear a plea on the Hapur lynching incident after a survivor of the crime moved the court seeking protection and demanded a court-monitored inquiry by a special investigation team. This came after Rakesh Sisodia, an accused in a lynching case in Uttar Pradesh, bragged about his crime to the NDTV team.
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