jaipur

Updated: Aug 08, 2019 01:30 IST

An Alwar court will on August 14 pronounce its verdict in the lynching case of 55-year-old dairy farmer Pehlu Khan. The hearing in the case was concluded on Wednesday.

Khan was attacked by alleged cow vigilantes on April 1, 2017 on Jaipur-Delhi national highway, in Alwar when he and five others were transporting cattle from a weekly market in Jaipur to their village in Nuh, Haryana. Khan died in the hospital on April 3, 2017.

Khan’s family had alleged injustice and protested state government’s move to charge-sheet him for cow smuggling.

On the basis of Khan’s statement, the police registered cases against suspects Om Yadav, Jagmal Yadav, Hukum Chand Yadav, Navin Sharma, Sudheer Yadav and Rahul Saini in Behror police station (FIR No. 255/17) 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). After Khan’s death, section 302 (murder) was added to the charges.

However, the cases were closed in September 2017 on the basis of a police investigation report that cited call records and the testimonies of workers of a cow shelter to exonerate all the six people named above. The state police presented charge sheet against five others instead, all of whom were released on bail between July and September 2017.

The Rajasthan police also registered a case against Khan and his sons, 25-year-old Irshad and 22-year-old Arif, for alleged cow smuggling on May 29 this year.