A mob of around 50 people lynched a Muslim youth in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district on the suspicion that he had stolen a buffalo, News18 reported on Thursday. Four people have been arrested, Bareilly Superintendent of Police Abhinandan Singh told PTI.
The incident was reported from Bholapur Gindoliya village in the early hours of Wednesday and the youth was identified as Shahrukh Khan. According to a report in The Times of India, Khan and three men allegedly tried to steal a buffalo from a villager’s house when 50 people surrounded them. While Khan’s accomplices escaped, he was allegedly beaten up by the mob.
“The victim was rescued by police at around 6 am and was taken to district hospital, where he died later,” told News18. “We have got complaints from both the sides and cases have been registered against 30 unidentified villagers as well as three people who accompanied the victim.”
A post-mortem examination revealed that Khan died of severe beating, Singh said.
The incident comes a week after the house of a Muslim man in Haryana’s Rohtak was attacked on suspicion that he had slaughtered a cow on the occasion of Bakri Eid. In Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district earlier this month, a mob allegedly assaulted and paraded two Muslim men whom they suspected of smuggling cows.
In July, the Supreme Court asked the Parliament to consider creating a new penal provision to deal with incidents of vigilantism, saying that mobocracy cannot be allowed in society. “No citizen can take law into his hands nor become law unto himself,” the bench had said. The Centre then set up a high-level committee to examine incidents of mob violence and lynchings and submit recommendations on how the challenge can be addressed.
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