Palghar lynching case: Two years on

A mob of around 400 people were still assaulting two passengers while the driver of the vehicle was trapped inside it.

Mumbai On April 16, 2020, two days after the nation-wide lockdown was extended for the second time to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hemraj Gawande, the station house officer of the police station in Kasa, a village in Dahanu tehsil of Palghar district, received a call at 9.30 pm. Abhijeet Kadam, a forest guard, had just received information from his colleague, Prakash Baswat, that residents of the nearby Gadchinchale village had stopped an Eeco car and were assaulting the passengers and driver.

Two years on, the trial is yet to start and the CID is yet to trace 56 accused. (ANI)

Gawande, a police naik, immediately dialled his senior, police station in-charge Anandrao Kale, and narrated what he had heard. Kale made two calls after that. First, he called Baswat on his mobile phone and verified the incident. Then, he asked some policemen on duty to rush to the spot 40 km away. When the police reached at around 11 pm, they found the vehicle toppled over. A mob of around 400 people were still assaulting two passengers while the driver of the vehicle was trapped inside it.

The police rushed into the crowd to extricate the victims. One brought the driver to safety in a shed, others managed to get the passengers — two seers belonging to a sect in Uttar Pradesh — into a police vehicle. But it wasn’t nearly enough.

On March 24, in a televised address to the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21 day-long national lockdown. A virus was spreading fast across the globe, and little was known about it. We need to protect ourselves by staying indoors, the PM said. Within days, the world as we knew it changed: flights were suspended, all means of public transportation were stopped, shops and offices shut down, work came to a standstill. The police put up barricades on roads even in rural interiors, turning people back if they moved without a permit. Migrant workers began to walk back to their home states. In an atmosphere rife with fear and uncertainty, the disinformation machinery went on an overdrive. Rumours began to circulate over social media platforms, like Whatsapp. But not all rumours were about Sars-CoV-2, the virus that caused Covid-19.

A forest officer, who was posted in the area at the time of the incident, said on condition of anonymity that several messages doing the rounds on WhatsApp at the time alluded to child lifters and organ harvesters on the prowl. These messages warned of child lifters disguised as sadhus (priests), policemen, doctors and other trusted figures. As a result, residents of five tribal villages, including Gadchinchale, in rural Palghar, formed groups to patrol at night and keep a lookout.

A medical professional was one of the first people to face the ire of the villagers. On April 14, Dr Vishwas Valwi was returning from Kasa from Covid-19 related duty in his private vehicle, he was attacked by some villagers who took him to be a thief. Policemen from the Kasa station were able to reach on time to help the doctor, but some of the cops were attacked by the angry mob. An offence was registered in connection with this incident at Kasa police station. While the investigation in this case is over, the charges are yet to be framed and the trial is still to begin.

Two days later, two seers and their driver were lynched.

“Messages and rumours circulating on WhatsApp are routine. However, the attack on the sadhus escalated because of mob psychology. They attacked the three with whatever weapons or things they could fetch. After examining hundreds of people, we managed to arrest over 250 accused whose roles were established in the commission of the crime,” said assistant commissioner of police Irfan Shaikh, who was one of the initial investigators on the case.

“The lynching of the three was purely an outcome of the strong rumours, because there was no past incident of child lifting or anything else,” said Maruti Jagtap, superintendent of police, State Criminal Investigation Department (CID). “A meeting was even held at the Kasa police station a few days before the incident [to refute the rumours].”

Investigation and findings

The state CID, which took over the case a few days after the lynching, has so far arrested 251 adults and 15 minors and filed three charge sheets against 222 of them. At least 196 accused have secured bail from the Thane sessions court or the Bombay high court (HC).

Their investigation revealed that on the night of the lynching, residents of Divshi, Dabhadi, Kinhavali and Rudana (the last falls within the limits of Dadra and Nagar Haveli) villages, who also had similar patrolling groups, joined the villagers from Gadchinchale.

Sub-inspector Sudhir Katare, who led the team from Kasa police station managed to extricate the three occupants — 70-year-old Kalpvriksha Giri Maharaj, his pupil 35-year-old Mahant Sushilgiri Maharaj and car driver Nilesh Suresh Telgade (30) — but the mob marched towards the police and continued the assault with the wooden logs, sticks, metal rods and stones.

The police managed to take Sushilgiri and Telgade to a police vehicle. Assistant police sub-inspector Ravindra Salunkhe rushed to help the septuagenarian and took him to a forest chowkie, a shed-like structure, for shelter. But, Salunkhe and the elderly seer were forced out as the mob bashed in the door. As Salunkhe tried to take the seer to safety to one of the police vehicles parked there, the mob separated them, and continued to assault the seer till he died.

The mob pulled the other two victims out of the police vehicle and assaulted them till they too died.

The entire assault lasted three-and-half hours, from 8.45 pm to 12.15 am.

Superintendent of Police (Palghar) Garurav Singh ordered additional police force from Talasari police station to reach the spot, but the team reached Chisda village by 12.45 am. It too, had to face another angry mob which thought them to be thieves disguising as policemen.

With the help of local police and village residents, the CID identified and arrested 251 persons over the course of three months, and filed a 12,000-page charge sheet against 126 accused on July 15 that year. The charge sheet stated that the gruesome attack was an outcome of rumours / fake messages making rounds on WhatsApp groups, informing the villagers that child lifters and organ harvesters were moving around in the area.

“Few accused spread the messages on WhatsApp groups, saying the child lifters while operating disguise themselves as sadhus, policemen, doctors, etc. This set of accused also instigated people to form groups for night patrolling in the five villages and that the thieves must be taught an appropriate lesson,” one of the charge sheets stated.

The police found that the seers, who were travelling from Kandivli, a suburb in Mumbai, to Surat, in Gujarat, took a short cut to avoid the police barriers and reached Gadchinchale village. Lost, they stopped only to ask directions.

However, when the Gadchinchale residents saw the seers in the car, they thought they were in disguise and had come to the isolated spot at night to steal the children the charge sheet stated.

After the incident, some videos of the incident went viral. They showed some policemen standing by as villagers assaulted the victims, making no effort to save them. There were immediate repercussions: Five police personnel attached to the Kasa police station were suspended and 35 others were transferred; 15 police personnel were punished with pay cuts; two were compulsorily retired and Palghar SP Singh was sent on compulsory leave (he was allowed to resume duty after six months later and posted to the Police Academy in Nashik as deputy director, Training).

Two years on, the trial is yet to start and the CID is yet to trace 56 accused.

In the court

There are four separate petitions before the Supreme Court that have sought for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe into the lynching incident. Two petitions are public interest litigations (PIL) filed by advocates Shashank Shekhar Jha and Ghanshyam Upadhyay. The third petition is by the members of the Panch Dashnam Juna Akhara, to which the two seers belonged. The fourth petition has been filed by Pooja Nilesh Telgade, the widow of the driver.

In June 2020, notice was issued in two the PILs. The matter was last heard on February 24, 2021 when the top court was informed by the Maharashtra police that the second supplementary charge sheet in the case had been filed. In the last order, the SC directed the state police to produce the investigation report within two weeks. The matter has not been listed since.

The state government had earlier informed the court in an affidavit that two charge sheets have been filed following the case being investigated by a special unit of the State CID. The state opposed CBI probe by stating that action was taken against 18 “delinquent” police officials for dereliction of duty leading to the deaths.

Advocate Amrut Adhikari, who is representing more than 230 accused in the case, said the police have named several innocent people as accused in the case.

“Some people are implicated in the case merely for being present at the spot. Many people had gathered there out of curiosity to see what exactly happened, but were not involved in the violence,” Adhikari said.

“A young engineer from a tribal community came to see what was going on. The police interrogated him at length and he cooperated with them. Despite that he was made an accused in the case and arrested. He was behind bars for 15 days. Because of this, many people did not come forward and speak the truth, worried that the police may arrest them too,” he said.

According to the lawyer, the vehicle had turned back from the border because of the barricades put up by the police, which prevented them from crossing through Silvassa to reach their destination in Surat. On seeing the vehicle return, the Gadchinchale locals suspected them of “touring the area”.

The lawyer insisted that the State CID should have traced the source of the rumours and booked those responsible, as well.

Meanwhile, the patron of Panch Dashnam Juna Akhara, Mahant Hari Giri said that he was in constant touch with top leaders of various political parties in Maharashtra as well chief minister Uddhav Thackeray over the incident.

“All have assured us of those responsible for the lynching of our two saints and their driver would be brought to justice. Over 100 people have been arrested in connection with the incident and some of them have got bail over the months. We are confident that the guilty would be duly punished finally in accordance with the law. We look forward to the case being taken to its logical conclusion through a speedy trial and those involved in the killing of our saints getting the punishment that is due to them,” he said.

[With inputs from Abraham Thomas, Sandeep Kumar and Ram Parmar]