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4 held for assaulting meat seller in UP; victim also booked
Meerut: Four men accused of thrashing a meat-seller at Gott village under Katghar police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district on Sunday were arrested on Monday, Moradabad police said
Meerut: Four men accused of thrashing a meat-seller at Gott village under Katghar police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district on Sunday were arrested on Monday, Moradabad police said. However, the victim was also booked for killing an animal with the intention to create mischief and violating lockdown guidelines.
A video of the incident was widely circulated on social media on Sunday. In that the men, along with two others — all of them self-styled gau rakshaks (cow protection vigilantes) —were seen catching a meat-seller and transporter named Mohammed Shakir and assaulting him for allegedly carrying buffalo meat with him. Shakir also alleged that his attackers demanded ₹50,000 from him.
Moradabad’s superintendent of police (city) Amit Kumar Anand said a case was registered against six people on the complaint of the victim’s brother, Zakir, and hunt was on for the other two men, including the main accused, Manoj Thakur. “We will arrest them soon,” Anand said.
Thakur claimed to be the national vice president of Gau Raksha Vahini, a cow protection vigilante group. But the outfit said he was fired from it six months earlier. The police couldn’t give a clear answer about Thakur’s institutional affiliation. “The case is under investigation, and I don’t know much about it,” said Gajendra Singh, station house officer of Katghar police station, when asked to confirm if Thakur was indeed an office-bearer of the vigilante group.
The police also lodged a case against Mohd Shakir for “causing mischief by killing an animal” and committing an act likely to spread infection and cause violation of the partial Covid curfew — legalese for the charge of not wearing a mask.
But the Moradabad SP denied it was a counter case. “Approximately 50kg meat was seized from him, and he failed to show any valid document for its purchase,” Anand said.
The case against the vigilantes was registered under sections 147 (rioting), 148 (armed with a deadly weapon), 149 (unlawful assembly), 389 (extortion), 386 (extortion by putting a person in fear of death), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code at Katghar police station.
