RANCHI: In yet another incident of "mob justice" in Jharkhand, 33-year-old Sandeep Tirkey, a former member of splinter Maoist outfit - People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI), was lynched by a mob of villagers with traditional weapons and bamboo sticks at Tesera village under Sadar police station in Gumla, around 100-km from capital Ranchi, on Monday morning.
According to police, more than 7 cases of loot, murder, and extortion were lodged against Tirkey, who had become a terror among people living in 20 villages in the region. Local sources revealed that troubled with his terror, the villagers, calling a Panchayat, decided to kill him on Sunday night.
“As per the plan, the villagers tried to corner him in his house at Tesera village on Monday morning, but he was not found there. Later, he was seen at a nearby shop reading a newspaper. The mob, mostly women, surrounded him following which he tried to escape away from there,” said a villager requesting anonymity. After chasing him to around one kilometer, the mob nabbed him and thrashed him badly by traditional weapons and bamboo sticks carried by them in a paddy field, he added.
According to the villagers, Tirkey succumbed to his injuries on the spot. The villagers claimed that Tirkey used to wave pistol, even on the dispute over trivial issues, and used to threaten them. On Sunday night, he threatened to kill someone following which people were mobilized and reached his home to teach him a lesson, they said.
Police recovered the body from the very paddy filed and has started the process of identifying the people involved in the incident. “Yes, Sandeep Tirkey was an ex-cadre of PLFI, who was not very active these days but used to terrorize people in the name of PLFI, was killed by villagers.
Prima facie, it appears that the villagers, who were annoyed with his attitude, thrashed him to death,” said Gumla SP Hardeep P Janardhanan. He has seven cases lodged against him in Gumla, including four murder cases, he added.
The SP told that the process of identification of the persons involved in the incident was in process, following which, an FIR will be lodged on the basis of statements recorded by the deceased’s family members. More than 80 villagers, mostly women, were involved in the killing, he added.
On the issue of planned murder, the SP said that they were trying to gather facts to get into the details of the matter. Tirkey was out on bail after remaining in jail for over a year in a murder case.