‘WELLHATCHED CONSPIRACY LED TO LYNCHING OF MUSLIM TRADER’

The public lynching of Ramgarh’s meat trader Alimuddin Ansari by a group of a dozen Hindu men on June 29 was “a well-hatched conspiracy”, Jharkhand police’s interrogation of four of the 12 accused has revealed.

All four are members of Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who told the police that one of them, identified as Raj Kumar, had followed Ansari on a bike throughout the around 15-km journey from Chitarpur to the spot where the victim’s car was intercepted by the group of men waiting at Ramgarh’s Bazartand area.

All the while, Ramgarh deputy superintendent of police Virendra Choudhary said, Kumar kept the group updated about Ansari’s movements after allegedly seeing him procure beef.

Choudhary, who is leading the SIT probing the lynching, said they went through the call details of the accused, “which shows they were in touch with each other between 7.30 am and 9.30 am” on that day.

The police, meanwhile, said the Ranchi-based forensic science laboratory said after testing the sample recovered from the spot that the meat was “beef”.

On Thursday, hundreds of people from different communities in Ranchi joined the nationwide protest movement called #Not In My Name against the recent cases of lynching in the country.

Students from various colleges, social workers and other individuals participated in the rally, demanding that the government initiate immediate action to stop such crimes.

They also submitted a sixpoint charter of demands to governor Droupadi Murmu.