Hapur survivor questions PM and Yogi’s approval of lawless Pradesh

“I am an eyewitness. I saw people beating Qasim to death. They would have killed me as well but left me for dead. They were lying when they said that Qasim had slaughtered a cow. There was no cow there, no weapon and no blood.”

“Curiously till today (Saturday, July 14, 2018) police has not recorded my statement. They have registered a false FIR. I today demanded departmental action against CO Pawan Kumar Singh and have asked IG, Meerut, Shri Ram Kumar, to get my statement recorded under section 164 of the Cr.P.C. before a magistrate.”

This is what Samaydeen (64), the only eyewitness to the lynching of Qasim in Hapur (Uttar Pradesh) two days after Eid last month, declared after he was released from the hospital in Delhi on Saturday. Both his arms have fractures as are three of his ribs. There are fractures on his legs too and he had sustained head injuries as well. There was hardly a part of his body where the skin had not come off.

He knows he has returned from the jaws of death and thanks God for it. He owes it to God to stand by the truth, he declares softly but firmly.

Police claimed that it was a case of road rage. It informed the court accordingly and the Sessions Court in Hapur was prompt in granting bail to the main accused Yudhisthir. The FIR brazenly peddles a lie although the police do have the video clip which had gone viral on social media. The clip clearly shows the main accused and others named by Samaydeen, who had tried to rescue Qasim from the mob but was assaulted instead.

He recognised several people in the mob, he claims. Many were from the adjacent village. Some he had known for long. He recognized others by face and would be able to identify them, he says with quiet confidence.

He is not the only one who is accusing Pilkhuwa Police ( Hapur) of concocting a case of road rage. Dinesh Tomar from village Hinjalpur also asserted that police had browbeaten Samaydeen’s brother Yaseen to write in the FIR what was being dictated to him by the CO. In front of him, claimed Tomar, the CO had threatened Yaseen that if he did not heed what was being told and reported a case of road rage, he and his family members would be implicated in false cases of cow smuggling and sent to jail. “I have seen the police do this and I no longer have any faith in the police,” said Tomar.

Yaseen says that pressure from the police has not ceased. He was still being threatened. At the police station he was being incessantly told that he had no hope of redressal in the ‘Modi-Yogi Raj’. The threat of implicating the family in false cases and even more dire consequences of telling the truth was being held out without a break. His own life and lives of his family members were at risk, he stated. He too had urged IG, Meerut to get his statement recorded before a magistrate.

Senior lawyer Vrinda Grover has offered her services to represent the family. The role of the police in Hapur was shameful, said Grover. The video of the lynching had been filmed and circulated by the accused themselves, she pointed out. But though the video clearly shows the mob abusing the victims and lynching them, police lodged a false case of road rage and did not even oppose the grant of bail to the main accused.

If police failed to give the victims justice, said Grover, the matter would be taken up in court.