Alwar attack’s Hindu survivor wants seized truck back, a job

Police are yet to speak to the truck driver who survived a deadly attack by cow vigilantes in Alwar earlier this month, despite being a key witness to the assault that left a Muslim man dead and the country outraged.

Arjun Kumar Yadav, 23, says he managed to escape the attack only after he told the self-styled gau rakshaks he was a Hindu. Five other Muslims who were transporting cows and calves in two trucks, including one driven by Yadav, were beaten up on the Delhi-Alwar highway on April 1. One of them, Pehlu Khan, died in a hospital two days later.

Yadav told HT that the Rajasthan police were yet to speak to him. “No one has recorded my statement,” he said.

Parmal Singh, the deputy superintendent of police investi- gating the case, however, refused to acknowledge Yadav’s importance as a witness in the case.

“Who told you that there was this driver called Arjun? From where have you found his name? Is there any person who has said that he was witness to the events that day? If you know any such person then I urge you to ask him to go to the police station and we will record his statement,” Singh told HT.

Asked if Yadav would be called to the police station as a witness, Singh said he wouldn’t disclose anything at this stage.

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The government will make “legal arrangements” to ensure doctors prescribe generic medicines, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday, a move that could hurt big drug companies but benefit millions of poor people.

It wasn’t clear if the new proposal would seek to put an end to the use of costlier medicines from Big Pharma. Prescribing a generic medicine means doctors write the composition of the medicine (the salt) and not a brand name.

Modi made the comments during the inauguration of a hospital in Surat, a known diamond hub which is also home to several top Indian generic drug makers.

“We are going to make legal arrangements to ensure that when doctors write prescriptions they write that generic medicines are sufficient and that there is no need for any other medicine,” he said.

“I have seen doctors writing prescriptions in such a way that the poor people don’t understand and go to the medicine shop where costlier medicines are sold.”

Making medicines cheaper is a politically sensitive issue in India where many patented drugs are too costly for most people, and where patented drugs account for under 10% of total drug sales.

POLICE HAVE STILL NOT SPOKEN TO THE TRUCK DRIVER, A KEY WITNESS WHO SURVIVED THE ASSAULT AFTER TELLING GAU RAKSHAKS THAT HE WAS A HINDU

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