Udaipur tailor’s security was withdrawn in 3 days, say kin; police defend move

Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal, who was brutally murdered by two Muslim men for a social media post earlier this week, had received police protection on June 16 after complaining of threats, but the cover was withdrawn in three days, his family alleged on Friday.

On June 9, Lal – who had a tailoring shop in Udaipur’s Bhoot Mahal for about two decades – shared a Facebook post backing suspended Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, Nupur Sharma, whose controversial comments on Prophet Mohammed caused an international storm.

On June 11, Lal was told that a first information report (FIR) was filed at Dhanmandi police station by a neighbouring shopkeeper Nazim against him for allegedly hurting religious sentiments. He was arrested the same day and released on bail the next day.

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But he told his family that he started receiving threats from unidentified men, who conducted a recce of his shop and asked him to shut it down. Scared, he went to the Dhamandi police station with a complaint, accompanied by other businessmen in the locality, on June 15. He also shut down the shop temporarily on June 15.

Two police constables were deployed outside his shop the next day, said eyewitnesses and members of the Bhoot Mahal business community. But they were gone on June 18 even as Lal kept the shop closed.

“When my father requested that the security be extended, the local police officers said it wasn’t possible for them to spare security personnel indefinitely. Instead, they told us to gauge if it was safe before opening our shop,” said Lal’s 20-year-old son, Yash.

Rajkumar Sharma, who was Lal’s employee and one of two eyewitnesses to his gruesome murder on June 28, corroborated this. “The two policemen were called off on the third day,” said Sharma. Yash said that when his father told the police about the threat to his life, police said that he had to gauge his own risk and safety.

Govind Singh, the former station house officer of Dhanmandi police station, and Bhanwarlal Paneri, the ex-investigating officer in this case -- both of them are now suspended -- refused to comment on the subject. But a local police officer, who did not want to be identified, said the decision was taken because Lal had not opened his shop despite the security.

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“Since Lal’s shop had remained closed and no attack on the shop had taken place, there didn’t appear a need to spare policemen for security job,” said this police officer, requesting anonymity.

Manoj Kumar Chaudhary, Udaipur’s superintendent of police who was shunted out on Friday, said, “The decision to deploy policemen or take them off was taken at the local level. I cannot comment much on it”.

He finally opened his shop on June 22. Six days later, two men – Riyaz Akhtari and Gaus Mohammed -- walked into his shop on the pretext of getting clothes stitched, and hacked him to death with sharp knives.

Members of the local business community said that they remembered Lal feeling unsafe in the second week of June. “Not only did Lal feel unsafe, him closing his business was also impacting some other local garments businesses that relied on him,” said Jayesh Champawat, a furniture shop owner in the market.

Many of these other shop owners accompanied Lal to the Dhanmandi police station on June 15. One of them was Gaurav Acharya, who worked in a neighbouring chemical shop for a decade before taking up a delivery gig a month ago. “Instead of assuring him of security, the police asked him to call a meeting with the Muslim community members for a compromise and apologise to them,” said Acharya, who had submitted ₹10,000 as Lal’s bail bond to get him released on June 12.

The police got the two parties at a table, brokered a peace between them and they decided to withdraw their complaints against each other.

Lal, however, felt unsafe and decided to stay away from the shop. But the next day, local residents told the family that police had deployed two constables outside. “The market people called my father to inform him that two policemen were standing guard outside the shop. The police later told us that they were worried about the shop being burnt down,” Yash said.

Once the constables were gone on June 18, the threats began again. Lal told his family that unidentified motorcyclists were conducting a recce of his closed shop. He was also desperate as income had dried up, and he again approached the police on June 20. The police again brokered peace between the two parties.

On June 22, Lal reopened his shop.

But there was a constant sense of fear. Yash said that his father, who would usually return home from work after 10pm, began leaving his shop by 6pm, taking different routes home daily. “I wish the police had at least redeployed the security when my father opened his shop,” Yash said.