india

Updated: Aug 07, 2019 21:40 IST

A local court in Alwar will pronounce the judgment in the controversial Pehlu Khan lynching case on August 14. The hearing in the case was concluded on Wednesday.

Pehlu Khan’s family had alleged injustice and protested state government’s move to chargesheet Pehlu Khan for cow smuggling. The family has maintained that Khan and five others travelling with him were taking the cattle purchased from a Jaipur cattle fair to their Nuh village in Haryana when he was beaten up by cow vigilantes.

The incident was reported near Behror in Rajasthan on the Delhi-Alwar highway on April 1, 2017 when Pehlu and others were accosted and allegedly thrashed by a group of men who accused them of smuggling cattle. Pehlu succumbed to his injuries at a private hospital on April 3, 2017.

Rajasthan Police had initially registered a case against six people named in Khan’s statement - Om Yadav, Jagmal Yadav, Hukum Chand Yadav, Navin Sharma, Sudheer Yadav and Rahul Saini—for unlawful assembly, voluntarily causing hurt, wrongful restraint and culpable homicide along with other charges. Murder was added to the charges after Pehlu Khan’s death.

However, the cases were closed in September 2017 on the basis of a CID-CB 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 Pehlu Khan and his sons 25-year old Irshad and 22-year old Arif along with 55-year old Khan Mohammad for alleged cow smuggling on May 29 this year.