Chapra: Three people were lynched at a village in Bihar’s Saran district Friday morning by a mob that caught hold of them while they were allegedly stealing cattle, police said.
The incident took place in the wee hours at Paigambarpur village under Baniapur police station.The deceased have been identified as Raju Nat, Bides Nat and Naushad Qureshi, Superintendent of Police Har Kishore Rai said.
He said two of the deceased were beaten to death at the village, while another succumbed to injuries when he was being taken to a hospital by family members.
All the deceased belonged to Paigambarpur village, Rai said, adding the bodies have been sent for post mortem and investigation is on.
In recent years, angry mobs have lynched many people from marginalised groups, especially Muslims and the Dalits who occupy the lowest rung of the caste system, often over suspicions of cow slaughter.
The three men were caught by some villagers early Friday while trying to load cattle on a pickup truck, local police official Har Kishore Rai said.
“They were trying to load a buffalo and a calf when some villagers woke up and took the three into their custody and beat them up,” he said, adding that the men had died.
Police have arrested three people from the village of Pithauri and have filed a case of murder against four more from the village, administrative official Lokesh Mishra said.
Police have filed a case of theft against the three men, and the villagers face a separate case of murder filed by the victims’ families, naming three accused people, although more names are likely to be added, Mishra said.
Hinduism, India’s dominant religion, considers cows sacred, and killing them is taboo.
Activists have tracked a rise in the number of mob lynchings in the last five years that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist government has been in power. Critics accuse it of not having done enough to rein in such violence.
The Supreme Court last year recommended making mob lynching a separate offence. In July, opposition parties in Bihar demanded a separate law against mob lynching in the state, where they say the problem is growing.
