BJP man, 10 others get life for Jharkhand ‘gau raksha’ killing

RAMGARH: In the first sentencing in a case related to violence on the pretext of cow protection, a fast-track court in Jharkhand awarded life imprisonment on Wednesday to 11 convicts, including BJP’s Ramgarh district media in-charge Nityanand Mahto, for lynching Alimuddin Ansari, a meat trader, in June last year.

The 12th person involved in the lynching is a minor and the prosecution has asked the juvenile justice board to treat him as an adult as he is over 16 and “was aware of the impact of his actions”. This plea is pending with the board.

The others convicted include three members of the local gau raksha samiti — Santosh Singh, Deepak Mishra and Chhotu Verma — and Vicky Sao, Sikandar Ram, Vikram Prasad, Raju Kumar, Rohit Thakur, Kapil Thakur and Uttam Ram. They were found guilty under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting with deadly weapons), and 149 (unlawful assembly).


Prosecution sought death for 11 convicts
While prosecution lawyer S K Shukla said he had demanded capital punishment for the 11 convicts, saying their offence fell in the “rarest of the rare category”, defence counsel Sanjeev Ambastha had prayed to the court to award the minimum punishment to the guilty as they had no previous criminal record.

Reacting to the development, Ansari’s family said they were satisfied with the verdict.

Ansari, a 55-year-old meat trader from Manua village under Giddi police station in Ramgarh district, barely 50km from the state capital Ranchi, was lynched by a mob on June 29, 2017 for allegedly carrying beef in his car. The victim’s wife, Mariyam Khatoon, had filed an FIR at the Ramgarh town police station against 17 people and investigating officer Vidhyawati Ohdar filed a chargesheet against 12.

The lynching was among a spate of similar episodes reported from across the country where people were beaten up or killed on suspicion of carrying beef or smuggling cows for slaughter.