Jaipur: Two minors who were accused in the lynching of Pehlu Khan were found guilty by the Juvenile Justice Board in Rajasthan’s Alwar on Thursday. They are likely to be sentenced on Saturday.
This is the first conviction in the case. Earlier, six men named by Pehlu Khan before dying were given a clean chit by the CID and later nine others, including the two minors, were named as the accused by the police. Out of these nine, six were acquitted last year by a local court in Alwar and one is still absconding. The two minors have now been convicted.
Kassim Khan, the advocate for Pehlu Khan’s family, told The Wire that the Board identified the two minors in the video showing Pehlu Khan’s lynching. “We expect they would be sentenced to an imprisonment of maximum three years as per the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act. The judgment is awaited,” he said.
Pehlu Khan’s lynching
In April 2017, Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, and four others, including his two sons, were attacked by self-styled ‘cow vigilantes’ in Behror, Alwar. They were returning to their homes in Haryana’s Nuh with cows they had purchased at a cattle fair in Jaipur. Accusing them of being cattle smugglers, the mob assaulted them for almost three hours between 7 pm and 10 pm. Khan succumbed to his injuries two days later.
Before dying, Khan, in a written statement, accused six members of Sangh parivar-affiliated organisations of the assault. “About 200 men stopped our pick-up truck at Behror flyover and started abusing and assaulting us. While assaulting, they were taking names – Om Yadav, Jagmal Yadav, Hukum Chand Yadav, Navin Sharma, Sudheer Yadav and Rahul Saini – to refer to each other and saying that they are members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal. They also warned that whoever passes through Behror with cows will be beaten up like this.”
An FIR was registered against those six men under various sections of the Indian Penal Code: 143 (unlawful assembly), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (wrongful restraint), 308 (culpable homicide), 379 (theft) and 427 (destruction of property). Murder charges were added following Khan’s death.
Five months later, after the Crime Investigation Department investigated the case, the police said the six men were not involved and moved for their discharge. Two hundred other ‘unidentified’ people were listed as accused in the murder case. Nine other men were also identified based on video footage of the incident, including two minors, and were arrested on charges of murder – Vipin Yadav, Ravindra Kumar, Dayanand, Kaluram, Yogesh, Bhim Singh and Deepak.
Also Read: A Detailed Breakdown of Exactly How Justice Was Denied to Pehlu Khan
In August 2019, a local court in Alwar acquitted six of these nine accused, citing a lack of evidence. One is absconding.
In October 2019, the Rajasthan police under the Congress government had moved an application in the court to seek permission to further investigate the case. Following this, the government also constituted a special investigation team (SIT) that submitted its report last month, pointing out lacunae in the previous investigation, including presenting the video of the lynching before the court in a proper manner.
