ALWAR: It took

more than three hours to travel 6km while taking a critically injured victim of lynching,

, to the nearest hospital, the

(CHC) in

, on Saturday.

Rather than save the life of the 31-year-old youth allegedly lynched by cow vigilantes on Friday night, the two cows recovered from him seemed to have been the police’s priority. The cows were taken to a gaushala 10km away a good one hour before Khan was brought to the CHC, dead.

According to the health centre’s OPD register, a copy of which is with TOI, Khan was brought in at 4am.

The FIR says police were alerted about the attack at 12.41am by a ‘gau rakshak’, Naval Kishore Sharma. Ramgarh police said a team reached the lynching spot within 15-20 minutes.

However, the police on Sunday were hard-pressed to explain what took them so long to bring the victim to the CHC. The FIR, though says police rushed to the spot and that Khan was taken to the hospital immediately.

Relatives of Rakbar at the hospital in Alwar on Saturday.

‘Cops arranged for cows’ transfer’

While the FIR registered by assistant sub-inspector Mohan Singh says the victim had identified himself as Rakbar Khan, son of Suleman Khan, a native of Kol village in Mewat, the OPD register says the police brought an “unidentified” person at 4am.

“They (police) brought him at 4am and as he was brought dead, I directed that the body be shifted to the mortuary,” Dr Hasan Ali, who was the duty officer at the CHC, told TOI.

‘Gau rakshak’ Sharma claimed that he guided police to the spot. The cops took Rakbar to the police station while Sharma went back to the Jain Sudha Sagar gaushala. Moreover, the FIR mentions that when the cops reached the spot, they saw some people fleeing.

This contradicts the version of some police officers on Sunday that a delay could have been caused in finding the place in Lalawandi village where Rakbar was lying injured. Residents of Lalawandi village confirmed to TOI that they saw a police jeep in the area around 1am.

Rajendra Singh, who recently took charge as SP of Alwar district, admitted to newspersons at the Ramgarh police station that it had been brought to his notice that there was allegedly a delay in taking Khan to the CHC.

That the cows were police’s priority over an injured Khan was confirmed when Raghuvar, the caretaker of the Jain Sudha Sagar Gaushala, told TOI that the bovines were brought in at 3am. The cows were shifted in a tempo arranged by the cops, sources said.