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Five months after Pehlu Khan was lynched in Rajasthan’s Alwar, the state police decided to close the investigation against six people that were named by Khan in his statement before he died in April, Hindustan Times reported on 14 September.
Khan’s son Irshad now wants the Supreme Court to order a order a fresh probe into his father’s killing and shift the case out of Rajasthan.
Irshad said he has no faith in the CID and the Crime Branch of Rajasthan Police.
He told HT that the family is being threatened regularly. “We are living in a miserable situation. The local Police are not helping us,” he said.
The six accused were given a clean chit based on statements given by staff members of a cow shelter as well as some telephonic records, the HT report said, quoting from an investigation report.
According to the report, the staff members of Rath Gaushala, a cow shelter, have said that the six men – 45-year-olds Om Yadav and Sudhir Yadav, 44-year-old Hukum Chand Yadav, 73-year-old Jagmal Yadav, 48-year-old Naveen Sharma, and 24-year-old Rahul Saini – were present in the shelter. This is significant because the gaushala is located about four kilometres from the site where Khan was lynched.
The investigation against nine other people in the case, however, will continue. Seven of the nine people have been arrested while two of them are on the loose.
The Crime Investigation Department-Crime Branch Department that was investigating the case had on 1 September asked the Alwar police to remove the names of the six men from the list of the accused. Subsequently, a reward on finding information on them was also cancelled.
Irshad, told the media in his village Jaisinghpur, 15 km from Nuh town, that they will ensure that those behind his murder get punished.
One 1 April 2017, Pehlu Khan had left home with his sons to buy cows from the Jaipur Cattle Fair. On his way back, he was attacked by some cow vigilantes. He succumbed to injuries a few days later.
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