Paul CinirajPatna (Bihar, India), SVM News, Sept 23, 2007: Two more suspected thieves lynched at Saketpuri, a lower middle class neighbourhood under the jurisdiction of Sultanganj police station of Patna in Bihar state on September 21.
The alleged thieves were attacked by an angry crowd after a resident raised an alarm on Friday night.
"One of the victims jumped into a pond to escape, but the mob encircled, stoned, pulled him out and he was beaten to death," Anwar Hussain, City Police Superintendent told to the
Salem Voice Ministries (SVM) News Service.
Another man's body was recovered on Saturday morning.
There are many incidents of lynching, dragging and assaulting in Bihar state since last few days.
It was on Sept 12, ten people belonging to a poverty-stricken community in Bihar itself, were lynched in Vaishali district. A high-level probe has found those men were not thieves as suspected earlier.
Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar imposed a fine two days after the incident against the residents of a village that lynched 10 alleged thieves and taking the law into their own hands.
On August 29, an unemployed youth named Salim Aurangzeb was tied to the motorcycle of a police officer and was dragged along the road in Bhagalpur in full view of the cheering crowds for alleged chain snatching.
On Sept 5, two children were beaten, paraded on the streets and had their heads tonsured by villagers for allegedly stealing a few packs of detergent in Vaishali.
On September 9, three boys aged between 17 and 18, who had robbed a motorcycle at gunpoint near Shriddala, escaped lynching when police reached thescene on time. However, the right eye of one of the boys was gouged.
A 60-year-old dalit man, a landless laborer named Bhagawat Ravidoss was beaten to death and his relative Hari Ravidoss seriously injured on September 18 by landowners of Bhadrar village in Banka District.
Same day, an young man, Rakesh Kumar, 26, lynched by a mob in Patahi village in Sitamarhi district for allegedly stealing a statue from a temple. He was beaten to death with sticks and rods after a witchcraft practitioner identified him as the one who had stolen the statue.
In another incident in Bhagalpur district, two minor girls were assaulted by their neighbours in Kulkuliya village under the Ghogha police station. The police failed to register a case despite visiting the affected family.
In Jharkhand state also a mob of villagers from Daridag and Kodi localities in Ramgarh district in Jharkhand attacked a gang suspected to be involved in a number of thefts and beheaded three of them on September 20 night. Those killed have been identified as Faiaz and Umar of Soso village under Gola police station, and Maniruddih of Piri village under Barkakana OP.
There are many other incidents of social and religious turmoil throughout India during the last month.
On August 26, a tribal man and three women were brutally beheaded by a group of villagers who suspected them that they were practicing sorcery in Balasore district of Orissa.
On the same day, a violent attack on a house church in Kolar district of Karnataka state and was beaten pastor Emmanuel Venkatesh and M.S. Thimmakka and stabbed a church member Venkattarajappa on his hand and hips as christian persecution.
The next day, a 24-year-old man named Ramesh Patel was chained to a tractor, dragged and murdered in Palanpur district of Gujarat. A whole village watched yet no one uttered a word.
On August 28, a mob gathered after a speeding truck in Agra, the home town of the Taj Mahal in Uttar Pradesh, crushed four teenagers and burned more than 54 vehicles and many shops nearby in which one person was killed and many were hospitalized. The same day, retaliatory killings were prevented in Gohana village in Haryana state due to the prompt intervention of the Dalit elders and police force after one of their youths was found murdered.
On August 29, Raibhan Tembhurne, a 55-year-old school teacher allegedly killed his 19-year-old college studentdaughter Ratna as a human sacrifice along with his two wives Reema and Sharda by the instruction of a black magic petitioner because he had fathered a son at village Kudegaon, which is about 50 miles from Bhandara in Maharashtra state. Same day, Mathews Pulimoottil Cor-episcopa, an 81-year-old village bishop of the Malankara (Indian) Orthodox Church, was severely beaten and hospitalized in Cochin in Kerala.
On August 30, a Dalit woman was allegedly raped by two persons in Shajapur in Madhya Pradesh.
The following day, four alleged fuel thieves were tortured for hours and made to crawl by villagers and truckers near Bhubaneswar in Orissa. Also that day, as also previously reported by the news service, Mariyam, an elderly 83-year-old woman, was murdered in Trissur district of Kerala. A 45-year-old Dalit man, Brahmadas, was allegedly burned to death by his employers in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh on the same day.
On Sept 1, two elderly women were allegedly murdered by their sons in Keonjhar district in Orissa for practicing sorcery. The arrested youths told police they killed their mothers, who were in their 60s, because a witch doctor told them that their mothers were trying to kill them in order to achieve success in witchcraft after killing their fathers, who had died some time ago.
The next day, a girl and a boy were beheaded at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh after they were found in a compromising position.
On Sept 3, Itwari, a ten-year-old boy was tied to a horse by a rope and dragged on the road by a Gujar crowd in Jalandhar District of Punjab for trying to stop their horses from grazing his fields. On that same day, T Solomon was tied to a tree near Kollam in Kerala and mercilessly beaten for allegedly stealing a cow. Police later found him mentally unsound. Also on that day, aAn elderly Dalit woman named Hirawati, 60, was beaten to death by four upper caste women over a petty dispute in the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
The next day, September 4, women of Vachunuru village in Andhra Pradesh ransacked belt-shops and seized ID liquor and IML when the authorities failed to prevent liquor 'menace' despite their requests. That same day, angry crowds lynched Shiv Mohan and tried to set his house on fire for allegedly raping and murdering a three-year-old girl in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. Also on September 4, Boraj Panchayat near Ajmer in Rajastan conducted a compulsory body search of all its citizens to detect the alleged rapist among them. The villagers also beat a man to death near Rourkela in Orissa for allegedly molesting a woman.
On September 5, Krishna Khoya, suspected of murdering an elderly couple with witchcraft was executed by a tribal council in Jharkhand State.
Ranchi, the capital city of Jharkhand also witnessed a gruesome incident of mob violence last month in Tupudana in which three people were done to death.
On Sept 16, Hindu extremists burned down a prayer hall and beat Pastor Virendra Singh and his wife Bhavna in Barauli village near the Madiaon police station in Uttar Pradesh during the worship service as an act of Christian persecution. A mob of 30 extremists, led by Narendra Singh and Giri Baba, reached the prayer hall and picked a fight with the pastor. They threatened the couple and then set the thatched building on fire. The whole structure was reduced to rubble in a matter of a few minutes.
Source: http://salemvoice.org/svmnews249.html
