There was no cow at lynching site: Hapur residents

Hapur (UP), August 14

Another four days and it will be two months since a man was lynched and sustained serious injuries allegedly by cow vigilantes.

While 45-year-old Qasim from Pilkhuwa died, 65-year-old Samiuddin of Madapur village is still battling for life at a hospital in Ghaziabad.

The Supreme Court on Monday took note of a petition by Samiuddin that he and his family were living in a state of fear with the local police forcing them to lodge a complaint of road rage rather than lynching over alleged cow slaughter. The SC directed a senior UP police officer to probe the Hapur lynching, terming the survivor’s allegations serious.

Madapur residents dismissed the rumours that the victim was involved in anything to do with cow slaughter. “Where is the cow?” they asked. “The uproar was over a cow, but there was no cow at the spot. There was no cow, or a knife or an axe. Samiuddin had a sickle to cut fodder on his one-and-a-half bigha piece of land,” said a resident. The police version, now challenged in the Supreme Court, was that a mob thrashed the two men after a motorcycle hit a youth. Madapur residents said Samiuddin had to attend a funeral on June 18, the day he and his companion were attacked by a mob.

Samiuddin’s son had gone to another village to work as a construction labourer and there was nobody to fetch fodder for the cattle the family kept, said a resident.

Not sure when he would return from the funeral, Samiuddin decided to bring ‘jowar’ from his field, which is equidistant from Muslim-majority Madapur and Hindu-majority Bajheda Khurd village, before leaving for the funeral, he said. That is where he was attacked by a mob, local people said. “He was hit with lumps of earth, bricks, a sickle, absolutely anything that the mob could lay hands on,” said another resident.

Samiuddin, in his plea before the Supreme Court, has sought setting up of a special investigation team to ensure an “impartial, competent and fair investigation into the barbaric incident of mob lynching on June 18”. The petition said Samiuddin and Qasim were assaulted by a mob of the majority community from the neighbouring village “in the name of cow vigilantism”. — PTI