A mob on Sunday lynched two men in the Nagaon district of Assam on the suspicion that they were cattle thieves and were trying to steal two cows from a village. The Nagaon Police have detained two people in connection with the case. Interrogation is underway.
Senior police officials said that the two men — 23-year-old Abu Hanifa and 24-year-old Riazuddin Ali — were badly thrashed by a mob after villagers raised an alarm accusing the two men of chasing away a couple of cows from the grazing ground in Kasamari village on Sunday afternoon.
"When the police reached the spot, they were being thrashed by a mob of villagers near Kasamari grazing reserve under Nagaon police station...The team immediately took the men to hospital, where they succumbed to their injuries," Nagaon Superintendent of Police Debaraj Upadhay told the Press Trust of India (PTI).
Upadhay said that the mob of villagers thrashed them with sticks continuously while chasing them for 1.5 kms from the Kasamari village under the Nagaon Police Station area to the Jajori Police Station Area. He added that the two deceased men had been identified and that their parents filed a complaint with the police.
A case of murder has been filed against unidentified persons. Investigation into the lynching incident is still underway. No arrests have been made yet. SP Upadhay has assured that an "impartial inquiry" will be conducted into the incident. "We are trying to gather video footage and other evidence to ascertain the identity of the attackers," the SP told the Indian Express.
"In this case, I got reports that some people saw the two men trying to take away cows from the field and called more people from the village. When a large crowd gathered, they started thrashing them badly," the SP told PTI when asked whether this incident was a case of "cow vigilantism." He added that many cattle theft incidents have taken place in Nagaon district.
The deceased, SP Upadhay said, hailed from Naromari Jamtola village, situated about 2 kms from Kasamari. "We have handed over the bodies to the families after conducting the post-mortem examination and other formalities... Incidents of cattle theft has been on the rise in different parts of the district," the SP told the Indian Express.
Instances of crowds lynching alleged cattle thieves have been on the rise in the northeastern states of India since a few years. However, this is the first casualty of cow vigilantism to be reported in the northeastern state of Assam. Incidents of cattle thieves being thrashed by a mob have been reported from the state before.
A man had been lynched by a crowd after they caught him driving a vehicle carrying more than a dozen cows allegedly stolen from the Rangamati tea estate. The incident happened in Rangamati village in the Golaghat district of Assam in July 2015.
