Pehlu Khan lynching: Fifth of seven arrested get bail
Yadav, a student leader, is the fifth person to get bail in the case. Only two other accused are behind the bars.
The Rajasthan high court on Thursday granted bail to 19-year-old Vipin Yadav, one of the seven men arrested for the lynching of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Alwar in April.
Yadav, a student leader, is the fifth person to get bail in the case. Only two other accused are behind the bars.
All the seven, including two minors, were arrested on the basis of a video of the lynching which had gone viral on social media, causing nationwide outrage.
The minors were granted bail by a juvenile court earlier. Two other arrested men, Kaluram Yadav and Ravindra Yadav, too are out on bail.
Yadav was compared to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad by controversial Hindu leader Sadhvi Kamal ‘Didi’ in May.
The police are yet to arrest the six people named in the FIR, accused in the murder of 55-year-old Khan, who was waylaid by a mob near Behror en route to his village Jaisinghpura in Nuh, Haryana on April 1.
Khan, who had bought bovines from a cattle market in Jaipur for dairy farming, was beaten to death on the suspicion of being a cow smuggler.
His distraught family rued that they were completely in the dark over the case.
“We came to know about the bail of the accused from you. Nobody tells us anything these days… The police have done nothing to arrest the accused,” Pehlu Khan’s son, Irshad told HT.
The Rajasthan police changed the investigating officer in the case several times and currently, the case is being investigated by the criminal investigation department-crime branch (CB-CID).
However, no fresh arrests have been made in the last few months.
“Earlier, we met a lawyer in Jaipur who assured us that bail won’t be granted to one of the accused. We paid him over Rs 50,000 but at the end he spoke in favour of the accused. For the last two months, we haven’t heard anything about the case status. What do we do?” alleged Irshad.
He added that the family of Khan would continue to seek justice for him.
“Our struggle doesn’t end here and we will fight till the end,” he said.