Bisara villagers demand CBI probe in Akhlaq lynching case

Noida: Alleging one-sided action by Uttar Pradesh police in infamous Dadri lynching case in which 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was beaten to death by a mob in September last year, the people of the region have decided to hold a ‘mahapanchayat’ on April 10 to demand a CBI probe in the matter.

The locals, in fact, have formed a ‘sangharsh samiti’ which includes village pradhan namely Sanjay Rana, a local Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) worker, also named Sanjay Rana, whose nephew Shivam and son Vishal were arrested over the lynching, as well as Om Mahesh, father of UP police’s home guard Vinay, another accused.

Highlights:

• A meeting in this regard was held at Akhlaq lynching key suspect Vishal Rana's house chaired by his father Sanjay Rana who is a BJP functionary.
• A ‘mahapanchayat’ has been called by the residents of Bisara village on April 10 and the event will be held at Maharana Pratap Inter College of the locality.
• Residents of the entire Satha Chaurasi area will partake in the ‘mahapanchayat’.
• As many as 9000 posters have been printed to be pasted across the Satha Chaurasi area.
• Emphasizing that they did not seek permission from the authorities in this regard, Rana said, “Why do we need permission when Section 144 has not been imposed here?”
• The committee has threatened to hijack the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) railway track and stop trains movement in case the police and administration try to stall the ‘mahapanchayat’
• Earlier, the police had arrested 19 miscreants, including a minor boy from Bisara over the killing of Akhlaq.

Read Akhlaq family gets four flats in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh

What is ‘Satha Chaurasi’:

Satha Chaurasi is an area in the west of the Indian state of UP where the population comprises of the Jat and Rajput communities. It falls within the boundaries of the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha constituency,Meerut and Muzaffarnagar for electoral purposes. ‘Satha’ translates as group of sixty and ‘chaurasi’ as group of eighty-four.

The region includes Ghaziabad, Hapur, Gautam Budh Nagar district, Bulandshahr, Dadri, Baghpat, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar.

The incident:

On the night of September 28 last year, a mob had barged inside Akhlaq’s abode at Bisara village near Dadri of UP, on suspicion that they consumed and stored beef , and dragged him outside before beating him to death while his son Danish was severely injured in the clash hanging on with ventilator’s support for weeks.