Hate crime:  Mob attacks SPO in Nuh amid rising coronavirus cases

Sumedha Sharma
Tribune News Service
Gurugram, April 10

An ex-serviceman now employed as a Special Police Officer in Nuh was allegedly attacked by a group of men who accused him of spreading coronavirus, sources said on Friday.

A mob that included the local sarpanch of a village allegedly put a chain around Saimmuddin’s neck and dragged him, wounding him grievously, his wife Samina told police in her complaint.

Saimmuddin is an SPO at Nuh Police Station.

She said in her complaint that the incident happened at noon, when he was taking routine rounds of the fields in the area to check on the harvesting that went on there.

The local sarpanch, whom identified only as Rajender, allegedly abused him with communal slurs, and accused him of trying to spread the contagion. He then asked people nearby to attack him, she said.

"They charged at him and gagged him with iron chain and dragged him on road. He fainted and somebody called my father in law. When we rushed there, a few men stopped us and tried to chase us away with sticks,” she said.

Some relatives who lived nearby took Saimmuddin to a hospital in Gurugram, she said.

Police have booked the sarpanch and eight other people, which includes the sarpanch’s nephew.

The incident comes at a time when hate crimes have been reported from several parts of the country in the back of rising cases of coronavirus, particularly after the rise in the number of infections after a religious congregation in Delhi’s Nizamuddin held last month.

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