Survivor asks SC to oversee probe
NEW DELHI: THE 65-year-old survivor of the June 18 mob attack in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court seeking an apex court-monitored probe into the assault.
Meat trader Qasim Qureshi, 45, was lynched while the petitioner, Samaydeen, was injured in the assault in Hapur’s Bajhera Khurd village. Advocate Vrinda Grover mentioned Samaydeen’s plea before Chief Justice Dipak Misra’s bench, which said the matter would be taken up on August 13.
She asked the apex court to hear the matter urgently as two of the four accused in the case had been granted bail pending investigations. Grover alleged the Uttar Pradesh police had “blatantly violated the top court’s judgment” in the mob lynching case. She said the first information report in the case describes the incident as a road rage. Grover added the petitioner fears for his life. Samaydeen was with Qureishi when the mob claiming to be “gau-rakshaks (cow protectors)” attacked them after accusing them of killing a cow.
The attack came a day after the top court asked the Centre to frame a separate law to punish those found guilty of mob lynching. It was caught on camera and widely circulated online.
The apex court had on July 17 issued 22 guidelines to the central and state governments to put an end to the “horrendous acts” of vigilantism, lynching and mobocracy and directed them to work in tandem to take “preventive, remedial, punitive measures”.
Videos of the attack show the mob thrashing Qureishi and the petitioner. The attackers pulled the petitioner’s beard and hurled abuses at him. Qureishi died after the attack. Four people were arrested for the attack with police naming Yudhishthir Singh Sisodia, a local resident, as the main accused. Sisodia was let off on bail days later. In his bail plea, he claimed he was not present at the lynching scene. But an English news channel’s sting operation purportedly shows him bragging about the crime.
Samaydeen referred to the sting operation in his petition and urged the top court to transfer the lynching trial outside Uttar Pradesh for “’justice.” He asked the Supreme Court to cancel Sisodia’s bail. Samaydeen said police were yet to record his statement. He sought to give his version of incident on oath before a judge while demanding an independent probeinto lynch- ing incident.