On June 22, aboard a Delhi-Mathura train,

three Muslim youth were beaten up after an argument over seats. Later, a private security guard stabbed one of the brothers, 15-year-old Junaid Khan, to death

After two weeks, police arrest the main accused, who claims he acted in self-defence

At around 7.20 pm on June 22, Jalaludin, a taxi driver in Faridabad’s Khandawali village, got a call telling him his sons were in trouble at the Ballabhgarh railway station. Rushing there, he found that the DelhiMathura Passenger, on which his boys were travelling, had departed. Returning home to break his roza, Jalaludin was flooded with more calls, telling him to rush to the civil hospital at Palwal. There, he found two of his sons—Shaqir and Hashim—covered in bloodied bandages, but not Junaid. “I thought he was in the ICU,” Jalaludin later told wife Saira. Hours later, he was informed his son, just 15, had died.

Junaid had accompanied older brother Hashim and friends Moin and Mohsin to Delhi that morning to buy new clothes for Eid. Returning home by train, they got into an altercation over seats. The four were reportedly assaulted by a group of men who pulled their beards and taunted for ‘eating beef’. Things escalated, and at some point, someone in the group pulled out a knife. While Hashim, Moin and Mohsin escaped with injuries, Junaid was not so lucky. Thrown out at Asaoti station, he bled to death, head in brother Hashim’s lap.

Swinging into action only after the story made the lead headline in every newspaper and TV news broadcast, the Manohar Lal Khattar government constituted a special investigation team to nab the culprits, besides announcing a reward of Rs 2 lakh for information on them. The SIT at first arrested five men, including a Delhi government employee. Two weeks later, police arrested the main accused, Naresh Kumar,, who is from Bhamrola in Palwal and worked as a private security guard in Delhi.