IN a reminder of the horrific murder of Graham Staines and his two minor sons in 1999, charred bodies of two men were recently found inside a burnt vehicle in Bhiwani district of the northern Indian state of Haryana, causing an outrage and raising questions over law-keepers handling the case.
Police said the bodies belonged to two Muslim youth who had been reported missing. They were from Bharatpur district of the neighbouring state of Rajasthan. The victims’ relatives alleged that they were beaten and murdered by right-wing Hindus who, according to reports, accused the duo of smuggling cows.
However, leaders of the Hindu right-wing Bajrang Dal rubbished the allegations as did the police, who said they were probing the killings, the BBC reported.
India’s Hindustan Times daily on Tuesday (21) reported that the Rajasthan Police identified eight people, apart from the one arrested, who were allegedly involved in the murder of the two men from the minority community.
Cow vigilantism has emerged as a menace in Narendra Modi’s India with groups claiming themselves to be protector of cows, a sacred animal for the Hindus, turning violent against minorities or even those from the Dalit community (low caste Hindus) for acts such as consuming or storing beef, skinning dead cows, etc. Prime minister Modi has condemned such acts time and again saying they were unacceptable but yet they have continued unabated.
Several states in India have banned slaughter of cows, including Rajasthan and Haryana.
What happened in Bhiwani
The charred bodies of Junaid, 35, and Nasir, 27 — cousin brothers — were found inside the vehicle in Bhiwani district of Haryana, which is ruled by Modi’s Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, last week. The police later arrested Rinku Saini, 32, a taxi driver from Nooh district of the state. The police said a missing complaint about the two deceased was lodged on February 15 at a police station in Bharatpur. Next day, the bodies were found by the local people.
The Haryana Police said last week that they launched an investigation.
The police initially didn’t confirm the duo’s identity but said that they had been travelling in the burnt SUV before disappearing. Later, a senior officer of Rajasthan Police confirmed that the bodies belonged to Junaid and Nasir and they were identified by their kin, the BBC added.
While police teams from both states were working in tandem into the case, it was still not clear as to why the two men were travelling. One of their family members told the police that they left home early on Wednesday morning in the vehicle saying they had some ‘personal work’.
“At around 9am, some people at a shop said that two men were badly beaten up by 8-10 people. They were then taken away in a car,” the relative said in the police complaint, adding that the attackers had been identified as members of the Bajrang Dal.
According to The Indian Express daily, a senior Rajasthan police officer said that they tried tracking the victims’ phones after they received the complaint. But they were switched off.
A team of the Rajasthan police then accompanied the men’s relatives to Barwas village under Loharu police station area in Haryana’s Bhiwani where the charred vehicle was spotted.
The officer said the family members named some suspects from Haryana but added that the motive behind the killings was not clear. He said while Junaid had five cases of cow-smuggling registered against him, Nasir had a clean record.
Several media reports said after the discovery of the charred bodies that the two men may have been attacked by cow vigilantes who suspected them of transporting beef, something which has happened on more than one occasions in India in the last nine years.
An investigating officer in the case told BBC Hindi that the police complaint did not mention the smuggling of cows. He said the incident was being probed from every angle.
While the family of Saini, the arrested, told BBC Hindi that the former was only a driver and had no involvement in the case, police said they were looking for four other men who were named in the complaint, including Monu Manesar, a member of the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of India’s right-wing Hindu Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
Manesar allegedly was part of a low cow-protection group. He has more than 200,000 followers on YouTube where he often posts videos of himself and others taking on alleged cow smugglers and rescuing the animals.
He has also been backed by leaders of both the Bajrang Dal and VHP who recently addressed a press conference alleging that cow vigilantes were being “falsely framed”.
But the victims’ relatives were not convinced and said their protest would continue till Manesar was arrested, the Hindustan Times reported.
Meanwhile, the Haryana police formed a committee to look into the claims made by Saini. According to him, he and another accused tried to hand over the two victims to the police in Nuh district, media reports said.
The two men had been thrashed badly but were still alive.
NDTV reported quoting sources in Rajasthan police that cops from Haryana could have intervened but they did not.
One of the relatives of the victims even alleged that the police in Haryana were working closely with the Bajrang Dal members.
Officers in Haryana were not in agreement. Varun Singla, superintendent of police of Nuh district said the allegations were not correct and the state police was not involved in the deaths.
He also said the committee had been made since the allegations were serious.
Even the Rajasthan police have been attacking the relatives of another accused but they denied.
Rajasthan is ruled by the Indian National Congress, one of the major opposition parties in India.
On January 23, 1999, 58-year-old Staines, an Australian Christian missionary, was burnt to death along with his two sons, Philip, 10, and Timothy, 6, by members of Bajrang Dal inside their vehicle in Keonjhar in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
In 2003, Bajrang Dal activist Dara Singh was convicted in the case and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
