PATNA: A video, that went viral on social media on Wednesday, shows the 34-year-old Muslim youth from Bihar's Samastipur district pleading with folded hands to spare him before he was beaten to death.
Though the video doesn't show the faces of the people involved, the offenders can be heard asking the victim about the locations where cows were being slaughtered and beef sold.
The attackers also asked the victim to disclose how many times he had eaten beef in the past or if he has fed it to his children and if the Quran allowed eating beef, to which he replied in the negative.
Samatipur SP Hridayakant said an FIR has been lodged at Musarigharari police station against one Anurag Jha, a resident of Basudeopur in the district, for the offence under relevant sections of the IT Act and the IPC. “We have written to the officials of the social platform (read Instagram) to stop the circulation of the viral video aimed at spreading hatred in the society. The offenders have already been identified and raids were on to arrest them,” he told the media.
The SP said the video was made before the killing of the victim identified as Mohammad Khaleel Rizvi, a resident of Ruapuli village under Musarigharari police station on February 16. His body was recovered from the bank of the Budhi Gandak on February 18.
“The accused video recorded the victim's statement to cover up the murder and give the incident a communal colour. But the police foiled their plan and arrested the accused,” he said.
The station house officer (SHO) of Musarigharari police station Mohammad Aftab Alam said that the victim was held captive while going to Samastipur from his native village on February 16. A missing case was lodged on the statement of his brother Mohammad Sitare.
Sitare claimed that his brother was associated with the ruling Janata Dal-United. The police arrested the prime accused Bipul Kumar Jha, whose interrogation led to the recovery of the victim's body from Basudeopur village under Kalyanpur police station on February 18. His two associates — Rajesh Jha and Kishan Kumar — were also arrested for being involved in the kidnapping-cum-murder case.
During interrogation, the arrested persons confessed to the crime and disclosed that they thrashed Khaleel for his reluctance to return the money he took from them on the pretext of giving them jobs in the Railways.
They further revealed that they thrashed the victim to exert pressure to return the money. But he succumbed to injuries later, which forced them to dump the body in a ditch near the bank of Budhi Gandak at Basudeopur.
The leader of opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav attacked CM Nitish Kumar for his failure to contain such incidents. “I want to know for how long people will be allowed to take the law into their hands,” he tweeted.
The police, however, claimed that all the accused involved in the crime would be brought to book at the earliest.