Gurugram mob attack: Teen who was ‘slapped first’ surrenders, 5 more held

Rajkumar, the suspect who allegedly suffered a head injury and needed stitches, surrendered at the Bhondsi police station after the village panchayat requested his family to cooperate with the police.

Six more suspects were arrested, including an 18-year-old suspect who was reportedly hit by a cricket ball last Thursday, triggering violence between a group of 8-10 local men aged 18-30 years and a migrant Muslim family in Dhumaspur village of Bhondsi on the day of Holi, taking the total number of arrests to 11, police said on Tuesday.

View of the broken window panes at the house of the family that was assaulted by locals on Holi, at Bhoop Nagar village, in Gurugram.(Yogendra Kumar/HT PHOTO)

Rajkumar, the suspect who allegedly suffered a head injury and needed stitches, surrendered at the Bhondsi police station after the village panchayat requested his family to cooperate with the police.

On Monday, the police had urged villagers to cooperate in the investigation after a panchayat, called specially to discuss the March 21 violence, said police action was “one-sided”.

According to Rajkumar’s confession to the police, he and his friends were not the first to attack and he suffered injuries because the victim family was allegedly pelting stones at them. Police said if his injuries are found to be genuine, a cross-FIR would be filed.

Deputy commissioner of police (south) Himanshu Garg said, “Rajkumar has produced a medical certificate, which needs to be verified. He said he was admitted to the Civil Hospital on the same evening (as when the attack took place) and took a discharge fearing arrest. We are investigating what time he reached the hospital and which doctor attended to him. He seems to have suffered major injuries, but these are also subject to verification. If the information is found correct a cross-FIR would be registered against the victims (complainants).”

According to the police, Rajkumar told them that he was returning to Nayagaon, 1.5km from Dhumaspur, with his friend Mahesh Kumar—first to be arrested last week—when a cricket ball hit them.

He said that when they objected, one of the players from the victim’s family allegedly caught hold of his shirt and slapped him, police said.

The victim’s family had filed a police complaint stating that after an altercation with “two persons over cricket”, about 15-20 men had barged into their house with sticks and rods and thrashed them. At least three video clippings of the incident made by a family member were later went viral on social media.

Meanwhile, villagers of Nayagaon have called a meeting on Wednesday to meet senior district and police officials. They maintain that if the police does not file a case against the complainants, they will block Sohna highway. “Our boys are also injured and they were not the first one to attack. They have retaliated to the attack by the other side,” Nayagaon village panchayat member Balbir Singh said.

The police said they have recovered sticks, batons, water pipes and iron rods from those arrested so far, including one who was arrested on Tuesday and is a proclaimed offender in a 2016 case.

The victim family meanwhile said they were facing social alienation from the local villagers. “They are no longer interacting with us and have stopped visiting us as we did not pay heed to their request for a compromise,” 32-year-old Mohammad Dilshad, the complainant in the case, said, adding that this was also affecting their business, which was incurring heavy losses.