TWO JUVENILES HELD GUILTY IN PEHLU KHAN LYNCHING CASE
JAIPUR/ALWAR: The Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) of Alwar has held two minors, both male, guilty in the 2017 lynching of Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, by suspected cow vigilantes who thought he was smuggling cattle. They are the first to be found guilty in the case. The two will be sentenced on Saturday, defence lawyer Adarsh Yadav said on Friday.
JJB’S principal magistrate Sarita Dhakad found the two guilty on Thursday. Lawyer Yadav said the grounds for the ruling were not clear to him because he hadn’t seen a copy of the order.
“We will know the grounds only after the sentencing,” he said.
Another juvenile, who is older than 16 years, is facing trial in another court. The JJB hears cases against people who are below the age of 16. The maximum punishment under the Juvenile Justice Act is three years.
On August 14, 2019, the court of the additional district judge
(ADJ) of Alwar acquitted six men accused of lynching 55-yearold Pehlu Khan, who belonged to Haryana’s Nuh district. Vipin Yadav, Ravindra Yadav, Kalu Ram Yadav, Dayanand Yadav, Yogesh Khati and Bhim Rathi received the benefit of doubt after having been tried on charges of murder, rioting, voluntarily causing hurt, wrongful restrain, damage to property and theft.
The state government has filed an appeal against the ruling in the Rajasthan high court.
Khan was attacked on the Delhi-jaipur highway near Behror in Alwar district on suspicion of smuggling cows when he was transporting cattle bought from a weekly market in Jaipur to his home in Nuh with his two sons. He died in hospital on April 3, 2017.
Additional public prosecutor in the ADJ’S court, Yogendra Khatana, said he was unaware of the evidence used in the hearing before the JJB. “I can comment on the conviction only after going through the order,” he added. “Maybe the lapses in the main case were addressed during trial in the juvenile court.”
The defence counsel in the ADJ’S court, Hukum Chand Sharma, said the judgment of the JJB juvenile court will have no bearing on the main case, in which his clients have been acquitted.
In Jaipur, additional advocate general RP Singh, who will argue on behalf of the government in the high court, called the JJB’S ruling an important development. “We will definitely use it during the hearing of the appeal ,” he said.
After the acquittal of the six men by the lower court, the state government formed a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the factors that led to the verdict. The team recommended that new evidence be gathered and the suspects named or identified by earlier investigating officers be probed because a charge sheet against a juvenile delinquent hadn’t yet been filed.
Khatana said the prosecution in the juvenile court may have looked at such new evidence, leading to the two juveniles’ conviction.
The SIT was formed on August 17 and gave its 84-page report to director general of police Bhupendra Singh on September 5. It pointed to loopholes in probes conducted by each of the four investigating officers of the lynching case.