The accused have been booked under the lenient charges of culpable homicide
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – A mob beat a Muslim man to death in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli on Thursday, according to media reports reaching here on Saturday.
This is the 12th lynching case since June 4 after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was voted to power in the general elections.
Firoz Qureshi, a resident of Jalalabad, was beaten to death by a mob on suspicion of theft, reports said. Firoz, who had gone to the Jalalabad area of Ganga Aryanagar for work, was brutally beaten by the mob and later succumbed to his injuries, a report in The Observer Post said.
The incident occurred between 8 and 11 pm on Thursday, according to the FIR cited in the report.
Firoz’s family accuses Pinky and Pankaj Rajendra of leading the assault.
Family members had to protest with the dead body before the police station for registration of the FIR. The complaint was filed by his brother, Afzal. Although an FIR has been registered, no arrests have been made yet.
“He was beaten with bamboo sticks and cast iron weights. We demand justice for his innocent life,” The Observer Post quoted Afzal as saying.
“He leaves behind three children. Who will feed them? Who will provide for them?” he said.
According to Afzal, Firoz was a scrap worker with no criminal record. “He wasn’t a thief. He didn’t have any cases against him. He was a family man. We can’t understand why he was killed,” he said.
Meanwhile, the kin alleged that the accused have been booked under the lenient charges of culpable homicide (BNS-105). The lynching section of the new law was not invoked by the police, they said.
After the Narendra Modi government came to power, there has been a surge in anti-Muslim violence in north and eastern India. This is the 12th lynching since June 4 and the eighth lynching of a Muslim man since then.
The Muslim men in their 20s and 30s were brutally beaten by mobs, mostly associated with Hindu right-wing groups. A Christian woman was also beaten to death by a Hindu mob in Chhattisgarh.
In West Bengal, at least 13 mob violence incidents happened in two weeks, with dozens brutally assaulted and four dead. All the deceased, who were labeled as thieves before being killed, are from economically and socially backward communities.
