When Rakbar asked Aslam if he would help him bring back two cows and two calves from a village 12-13 kms away, he readily agreed.
After all, they had grown up together in a village in Haryana’s Nuh. Eight years apart, Rakbar Khan, a diary farmer, was like his “bada bhai.”
But, little did Aslam know then that the journey would alter the course of their lives.
As the duo walked home under the cover of darkness in July 2018, they were attacked by a group of men claiming to be gau rakshaks or cow protectors in Rajasthan's Alwar.
While Aslam managed to escape, Rakbar was not as fortunate.
"I have not had a night's sleep since the incident. I was thinking about him that night, I am thinking about him now. It has been a year since I lost my friend and brother in Rakbar,” he told The Quint in 2019.
‘They Had Torches Through Which I Could See Their Faces’
The Gau Rakshaks allegedly thrashed Rakbar on the suspicion that the two men were smuggling cattle.
Khan sustained grievous injuries and was dead before he reached the hospital.
Meanwhile, his friend Aslam, who was hiding in the fields nearby, froze in fear. He stayed in the same spot for a while before walking deeper into the jungles and seeking shelter in a house nearby.
He went on to become a key witness in the case later and told the police that he had heard the men taking each other’s names — Dharmendra Yadav, Paramjeet Singh, Naresh Sharma, Vijay Kumar and Naval Kishore.
"I was mindful of who these men were. They had torches through which I could see their faces and hear them take each other's names. One of those the police is passing off as a witness in court, his name is Naval Kishore. He beat Rakbar up while he begged for his life. He is no witness,” he alleged.
So, What Happened In Court?
While the Supreme Court had recommended that trials in mob lynching cases (Tehseen S. Poonawalla vs Union Of India) should be done daily and be completed within six months, the trial in Rakbar’s case went on for five years.
The trial, which wrapped up in April this year, played out in the same Alwar court with the same judge presiding over the case as the one in lynch mob victim Pehlu Khan’s case.
Pehlu was lynched in broad daylight in Rajasthan’s Alwar. However, the seven accused in his case were acquitted in 2019 due to lack of evidence.
In an application to Alwar’s District and Sessions Judge Sangeeta Sharma, Rakbar Khan’s 73-year-old mother Habiban and Aslam, argued that the presiding officer was in favour of the accused.
“The accused tell us that they have ‘managed’ the presiding officer and now the judgement will be in their favour,” the application alleged.
But the request was turned down after Justice Sharma said that she was not authorised to transfer the case under the special court set up for mob lynching cases.
Meanwhile, as the trial progressed, Aslam alleged that he faced open threats in court.
"They did not give me protection... I asked multiple times but they did not,” Aslam told The Quint.
Over the course of the trial, 67 statements were recorded, 129 evidence documents were submitted and the medical report was produced. The verdict is yet to come.
The Arrests
Aslam reportedly also heard that the men who were beating Rakbar were backed by local BJP MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja.
“Keh rahe the ke MLA sahib hamare saath hain. Hamara koi kuch nahi bigad sakta hai. (They were saying that the MLA is with them and that no one can harm them),” he said, according to The Indian Express.
While three (Dharmendra, Paramjeet, Naresh) out of the five accused were arrested immediately after the incident, Vijay was arrested a year later in 2019.
However, Naval , who is a local Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader and claimed to “help the police” in the case, was arrested only three years later in June, 2021.
According to the chargesheet, the accused had gone to a farm on the evening of the incident with a predetermined motive - catching "cattle smugglers" passing through the area.
The 'Role' of The Police: 3 Key Questions
Despite the arrests, several people have asked questions about police action in the immediate aftermath of the incident. These include:
1) Why did it take the police three hours to transport Rakbar to a hospital that was just 6 kms away?
Background: The police, according to The Indian Express, picked him from the spot, washed him, stopped to have tea, got his clothes changed at the police station and then took him to the hospital, where he was declared brought dead.
Five days later, the Rajasthan police suspended an assistant sub-inspector after he said in a video:
" I made a mistake...punish me or pardon me...it is simple."
2) What Happened To Rakbar in Custody?
There are conflicting claims in this case:
Police version: The police reached the spot in half-an-hour, found an injured Rakbar in the mud, washed him, then questioned him before taking him to the hospital, the chargesheet says.
"Rakbar Khan was alive after he was beaten up by the villagers. The police brought him to the police station where he was beaten up by the police personnel in my presence," Naval Kishore Sharma, now one of the accused, had told the media.
A 61-year-old woman, Maya also a relative of Sharma’s, told Hindustan Times: “I saw the police kicking a man (Khan) lying in mud and abusing him. When I went there to see what was happening, they told me to go away."
3) Why was transportation of cows to the gaushala prioritised over taking Khan to the hospital?
The police arranged a vehicle to ferry the seized cows to a shelter before taking the victim to the hospital, NDTV reported.
Referring to this, the police had admitted in a press conference that prima facie investigation had revealed an “error in judgement in deciding what was important at that point.”
‘My Father Was Bringing a Cow & People Killed Him’
Rakbar is survived by his wife and seven children.
"My youngest daughter says that my father went to God. If you ask her, 'How did he go to God?' she says, 'My father was bringing a cow and people killed him,” Rakbar’s wife Asmeena told the BBC.
While reeling from the loss of her husband, Asmeena experienced another devastating blow the first time she stepped outside her home, five months after Khan’s death in December.
"I was headed to meet my children who are studying in Aligarh when my vehicle collided with another. I was paralysed that day,” Asmeena told The Quint.
Since then, she has not been able to keep track of the court proceedings in her husband’s case and has had to rely on her father-in-law instead.
(With inputs from Aishwarya S Iyer, The Indian Express & Hindustan Times)
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