Alwar police have said that the victim Umar Mohammed and two others injured in the attack were cow smugglers and were transporting cattle in a stolen vehicle.
Representative image. Credit: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton
New Delhi: The two suspected in the killing of Umar Mohammed, a 35-year-old dairy farmer in Rajasthan who was transporting cows to his home in Pahari tehsil of Alwar district, have confessed to their involvement in the assault and have identified themselves as “gau rakshaks.”
Mool Singh Rana, the Alwar additional superintendent of police, told the Indian Express that Ramveer Gujjar and Bhagwan Singh – both in their 30s – have confessed to mutilating Mohammed’s body and leaving it near the railway tracks to make it look like an accident.
“They told us that they had spotted an empty pick-up truck passing through their villages, and suspected that it would return with cows. They planned to waylay it if it returned with cows. When it did, they first threw nails in its path, but the pick-up truck moved on for a few metres,” Rana said, adding that the two have claimed that “people in the pick-up truck first fired at them, and so they returned fire.”
The Alwar police had discovered Mohammed’s body on the railway tracks near Ramgarh station and had discovered an abandoned vehicle in the Govindgarh area.
The accused have been booked under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 147 (rioting) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence).
According to the Indian Express, Alwar police has said that Mohammed and two others who were injured in the attack on November 10 – Tahir and Jabba – were “habitual” cattle smugglers and the vehicle they were using to transport cows in had been stolen.
Deputy superintendent of police (Ramgarh Circle), Anil Beniwal, had earlier told The Wire that a case of ‘cow smuggling’ has been registered under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal Act against Tahir and Javed adding that “in the past too, Tahir has been charged with cattle smuggling” and had been absconding for some time.
Mohammad too had been absconding since 2012 in a case under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal Act, Alwar superintendent of police Rahul Prakash told Indian Express.
Tahir and Javed, however, have claimed that they were transporting milch cows purchased from Dausa.