Mystery of 3hour delay by police
‘CONSPIRACY’ There was a threehour delay in taking Rakbar Khan to hospital. There are conflicting versions about what transpired in this time but all raise a question mark over the working of the police
JAIPUR : What happened for three hours on Friday night in Alwar’s Ramgarh town is a mystery. Alwar police reached the forests of Lalavandi around 1am on information that vigilantes were beating up a man on suspicion of cow smuggling for slaughter and took the injured man to hospital at 4am. There are conflicting versions about what transpired in these three hours but all raising a question mark over the working of the police.
Rakbar Khan alias Akbar of Kol village in Haryana’s Nuh district was attacked by alleged cow vigilantes in Ramgarh’s Lalavandi forest area on Friday night. He was declared dead on arrival at the Ramgarh community health centre (CHC). Police arrested two people – Dharmendra Yadav and Paramjeet Singh — after registering a case of unlawful assembly, wrongful restraint, voluntarily causing hurt and murder on Saturday, and one more person – Naresh Singh – on Sunday.
In the FIR (321/2018), lodged by assistant sub-inspector Mohan Singh of Ramgarh police station, the police officer said Naval Kishore Sharma (a gopalak—cattle rearer—with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a right-wing Hindu organisation) informed him at 12.41am about some people beating a cow smuggler. He was on night patrol with two constables. Singh said he picked up Sharma in the police jeep and left for the spot around 4km away.
“It was raining and police reached in about 20-25 minutes,” assistant superintendent of police Anil Beniwal said.By this account, the police team reached Rakbar Khan around 1.15am. In the FIR, ASI Singh said some people
fled on seeing the police vehicle. “When we reached the spot, we found Dharmendra Yadav and Paramjeet Singh with two cows and a man lying in mud. We cleaned him up and asked him his name. He narrated the story of how locals beat him with sticks, injuring his ribs and limbs,” Singh wrote in the FIR.
According to the FIR, ASI Mohan Singh left for Ramgarh CHC after asking constable Surendra Singh to take the two cows to Jain Sudha Sagar Gaushala (cow shelter).
In the records of the CHC, accessed by HT, the time of arrival of police with Rakbar is 4am.
“During check-up, it appeared that there was a fracture in his leg,” said Dr Hasan Ali Khan, who declared Rakbar dead on arrival early Saturday morning.
The FIR was registered at 9.20am on Saturday, around 5 hours after the Haryana man was declared dead in hospital.
Jaipur range inspector general
of police Hemant Priyadarshi refused to comment on the specific question of why there was a delay in taking Rakbar to hospital but said all aspects were being looked into in the investigation. “At this preliminary stage of investigation, it will be improper for me to say anything more on this,” he said.
Alwar’s superintendent of police Rahul Prakash was transferred out in the bureaucratic rejig on July 19 and the new SP, Rajendra Singh, joined office on Saturday. In the interim, Beniwal held the charge of the SP.
A former police officer, who requested anonymity, said maybe on Friday-Saturday night, when the police team from Ramgarh realised the man was dead, they couldn’t reach out to their seniors for directions. “They would have got cold feet when the man died and would have been scrambling to reach out to their seniors for directions. This could have led to delay in their taking the man to hospital,” he added.