Locals gather at the spot where an unidentified Muslim man was lynched on suspicions of being a Pakistani terrorist. ( Vishal Srivastav) Locals gather at the spot where an unidentified Muslim man was lynched on suspicions of being a Pakistani terrorist. ( Vishal Srivastav)

As a frenzied mob lynched a Muslim man accusing him to be a Pakistani terrorist on Sunday, a local police outpost nearly half-a-kilometre away remained locked and the beat constable refused to react to a phone call by a local resident. While the 42-year-old victim was yet to be identified, residents of Kanpur’s Jana Village, where the incident occurred, were repenting the death of an innocent man. Nine locals have already been arrested in the case.

After the incident, Kanpur SSP Shalabh Mathur ordered an probe into the reported phone call made to a policeman and his failure to inform his superiors about the incident.

“Once the policeman is identified he will face the action for not reacting to the information given on phone by a local resident. We are probing into the sequence of the incident as to what exactly led to the villagers suspecting the man as a Pakistani terrorist. We are also hunting for two local residents — Raj Kumar Nishad and Deepu Nishad — who instigated the people to beat up the man,” said Mathur.

Speaking about the incident, Ram Sajeevan — a resident of Jana village — said: “Actually, all this happened after two local residents were robbed by a gang on the intervening night of September 10 and 11. A group of youths of Jana, Pyondi and Sheikhpur villages found this man, wearing jeans and a shirt, roaming in the village. Suspecting him to be a criminal, they caught him. While they were questioning him, others gathered. Since the man did not utter even a word about himself, people started beating him up.”

Sajeevan added that the mob realised that the man was a Muslim when he started screaming “Allah, Allah”.

“Someone in the mob hinted that the man could be a Pakistani terrorist trying to hide in the village. They dragged him to the banks of the Ganga, nearly half-a-kilometre from the village, and thrashed him mercilessly there. After realising that the man was motionless, the youths — around 15 in number — left the place,” added Sajeevan.

Sajeevan was among the ten locals who spoke to The Indian Express about the Sunday incident.

“People forcibly took him inside Jana village. After a few elderly people intervened, it was decided to hand him over to the police. While he was being taken to the police outpost, one Raj Kumar — who was drunk — started beating him up. Others too joined him later,” said Raju, another villager.

Another resident, Karan, said that the constable who was called up was known as “Pandit Ji”.

“The constable on the other side told him (the caller) not to take law in his hand and bring the man to the Maharajpur police station. He then disconnected the phone,” said Karan.

The police, however, claimed that they only came to know about the incident at around 3.00 pm through police control room (PCR).

“We got the information that few people are beating up a man and trying to throw him in river. We rushed to the spot. However, by that time the accused had escaped,” said the Station Officer of Maharajpur police station, Akhilesh Kumar.

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