65-yr-old dalit man axed to death in Chinhat village

LUCKNOW: It was a dreadful Sunday morning for residents of Chinhat’s Shahpur village. They woke up to the gruesome murder of a 65-year-old Dalit man, who was brutally axed to death allegedly by five members of a former village pradhan’s family after being chased for over 100 metres in an open field.

The deceased, Ramlal Rawat, who was not able to walk properly, tried to move quickly when former pradhan Guru Prasad Yadav’s sons Ranjit, Vijay, Raju and Sanjay and Vijay’s son Ajay chased him.

But the elderly man fell down after running for a few metres in the open field where he had gone to attend nature’s call around 8 am.

The assailants surrounded him from all sides and one of them attacked him repeatedly with an axe till he was dead. They walked away after committing the crime. Their terror could be gauged by the fact that none of the villagers dared to stop them.

The local cops, who reached there at least an hour after a villager informed them about the incident, had to face people’s anger.

The villagers staged protest, blocked the road and demanding immediate arrest of the assailants.

The agitation ended when the police assured them of stern action against the assailants and registered an FIR against them. The locals also accused cops of supporting the assailants.

Satya Sen Yadav, CO, Gomti Nagar said the murder was the fallout of a land dispute between the Yadav brothers and the deceased.

The CO said the deceased’s wife Rammo lodged the FIR of murder against five family members of the pradhan - his four sons and a grandson. The section of SC/ST Act was also included in the FIR. So far, there was no arrest in the case.