Pehlu Khan lynching: Fifth accused gets bail
The Rajasthan high court on Thursday granted bail to 19-year-old Vipin Yadav, one of the seven men arrested for the lynching of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Alwar in April.
Yadav, a student leader, is the fifth person to get bail in the case. Only two other accused are behind the bars. All seven, including two minors, were arrested on the basis of a video of the lynching, which had gone viral on social media. The minors were granted bail by a juvenile court earlier. Two other arrested men, Kaluram Yadav and Ravindra Yadav, too are out on bail.
Yadav was compared to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad by controdairy versial Hindu leader Sadhvi Kamal ‘Didi’ in May.
Police are yet to arrest the six people named in the FIR, accused in the murder of the 55-year-old, who was waylaid by a mob near Behror en route to Jaisinghpura in Nuh, Haryana, on April 1. Khan, who had bought bovines from a cattle market in Jaipur for farming, was beaten on the suspicion of being a cow smuggler. His distraught family rued they were completely in the dark. “We came to know about the bail of the accused from you. Nobody tells us anything these days… The police have done nothing to arrest the accused,” Pehlu Khan’s son, Irshad, said.
The Rajasthan police changed the investigating officer in the case several times and currently it is being probed by the criminal investigation department - crime branch (CB-CID). “Earlier, we met a lawyer in Jaipur who assured us bail won’t be granted to one of the accused. We paid him over ₹50,000 but in the end, he spoke in favour of accused. For the last two months, we haven’t heard anything about the case,” Irshad said.