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No attack on Pehlu Khan case witnesses, say Rajasthan police
Six witnesses, including lynching victim Pehlu Khan’s sons Irshad and Arif and lawyer Asad Hayat, lodged a report at Neemrana police station on Saturday, saying unidentified men fired from a black SUV when they were on way to Behror to depose before a court.
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An investigation by Rajasthan’s Alwar police has ruled out the possibility that key witnesses in an April 2017 lynching case were shot at while they were travelling to Behror to appear before a court.
Six witnesses, including lynching victim Pehlu Khan’s sons Irshad and Arif and lawyer Asad Hayat, lodged a report at Neemrana police station on Saturday, saying unidentified men fired from a black SUV without a registration number when they were on way to Behror to depose before an additional district judge court in the lynching case.
After the alleged firing, the six drove to Alwar and met SP Rajendra Singh.
“We will file the closure report in Behror court. If the court accepts our findings, it may order criminal proceedings against the witnesses for filing a false case,” said Behror DSP Kushal Singh.
Singh added that CCTV footages of a hotel near the spot of the alleged firing and Neemrana toll booth showed no evidence of the presence of a black SUV. He said the six witnesses should have called 100 for police help if they were attacked, instead of posting it on social media.
“After the alleged incident, the six people went back to Neemrana toll booth. They could have asked the toll booth staff to alert police about the firing,” Singh said. “On their way to Alwar, they crossed Neemrana, Shahjahanpur, Bardod and Tatarpur police stations but they did not report the incident to any of these and chose to drive straight to SP office.”
Pehlu Khan, 55, a dairy farmer from Haryana, was attacked in Behror on April 1, 2017, when he was taking cattle bought from a fair in Jaipur to his village in a pickup van. Khan died two days later.
