By Sami Ahmed

Ranchi, July 5, 2023: Ten men who had forced Mohammad Tabrez Ansari to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ before beating him to death have been sentenced to ten years of rigorous imprisonment.

The sentence was given July 5 by a trial court in the Seraikela Kharsawan district of Jharkhand, some 135 kilometers southeast of the state capital of Ranchi.

Ansari, 24, was lynched in Dhatkidih village under Seraikela police station on the night of June 17, 2019. He was tied to a pole and brutally beaten by a mob for allegedly trying to barge into the house of Kamal Mahato in Dhatkidih, one of the convicts in the case.

The main accused, Pappu Mandal, was in jail, while the rest were out on bail. All those accused on bail were taken into custody on June 27.

The court of additional district judge-I, Amit Shekhar, on June 27 declared them all guilty. Eight days later, they were convicted under sections 304, 323, 325, 341, 295 (A) and 149 of IPC. The court imposed a penalty of 15,000 rupees on each of the accused also. Out of 13 accused, two were declared not guilty while one was killed in a road accident.

Tabrez’s widow, Sahista Parveen, told local media that she would challenge the judgment in the higher court. She said that the convicts deserved the death penalty and a 10-year jail term is too little a punishment for the heinous crime of lynching.

Shaista’s advocate Altaf Alam said that it was a clear-cut case of lynching and that the accused should have been tried and sentenced for murder. He said that when Tabrez’s family members went to meet him in the lock-up, they saw froth coming out of his mouth. He added that they would file a criminal appeal with the higher judiciary.

Shaista Parveen struggled for four years to get the accused declared guilty. She was forced to issue a self-immolation threat as the Seraikela Kharsawa police in its final chargesheet had converted the charge of murder to culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 IPC.

In its first chargesheet submitted on July 23, 2019, local police had charged the accused with murder. Nineteen days later on August 11, 2019 the same police changed the charge in its final chargesheet.

The family of Tabrez had termed the medical report as not true which had mentioned a cardiac arrest as the reason for the death of Tabrez. The local police omitted section 302 IPC in its final chargesheet with section 304 IPC citing the medical report.

Shaista’s advocate Altaf Alam questioned the medical report and said that the death was not due to simple heart failure. He declared that it was a case of heart failure linked to severe trauma that Tabrez sustained due to the thrashing of several hours.

As the police changed the chargesheet, there were widespread protests. On September 16, 2019 Tabrez’s widow Shaista Parveen threatened self-immolation within two days, if the murder charges against the accused were dropped.

Seraikela police issued a press release on September 18, 2019 stating that the police had submitted a supplementary charge sheet under section 302 along with other sections of Indian Penal Code. The fallacy in the earlier medical report was established by the report of the expert medical board of Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (MGM) Hospital, Jamshedpur. On the basis of the report of MGM Hospital, a supplementary charge sheet under section 302 of IPC was filed.

Social activist Ashok Varma said that though the quantum of punishment is less but it will set an example for those elements who indulge in mob lynching. He said that the police’s poor investigation had resulted in less imprisonment. “Tabrez was sent to jail after being thrashed. Instead of admitting him to a hospital, the police sent him to jail. Even the doctors had ignored his injuries,” Verma remarked.

Source: indiatomorrow.net