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Bhiwani killings: The heinous deaths have sparked outrage in the region and a political squabble, with police suspecting cattle smuggling was involved. Back in the village, however, the residents are shrouded in anger and sorrow.
When he drove out of his village of Ghatmeeka in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district on Tuesday, Mohammad Junaid was a happy man. The 37-year-old truck driver had teamed up with his cousin Nasir to find a match for Junaid’s niece and was driving to the neighboring district of Alwar in a white Bolero. He told his wife Sajji that he would be back by midnight.
But even as the morning sun came up over the village of Ghatmeeka, the two men weren’t back. Alarmed, Sajji called on their phones, but to no avail. “Both the numbers were switched off. I sensed something bad happened,” she said.
With fear rising within her, Sajji waited in the courtyard of her one-bedroom brick-mud house, in which she cooks using firewood in one corner and a buffalo is tied in another. The phone of one of her relatives, Jahulaq, rang in the afternoon.
“An ex-sarpanch from a village in Haryana called my nephew to say that two badly thrashed men were brought by a group of eight-ten people to the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) office in Haryana’s Ferozpur Jhirka, 15kms from our village,” said Junaid’s uncle, Mohammad Ismail.
According to Ismail, the ex-sarpanch was tipped off by a police officer from Haryana Police’s CIA unit. “The mob accused Junaid and Nasir of smuggling cattle,” he added. The CIA has denied any involvement in the case by its personnel.
The call triggered a massive search by villagers, which ended in tragedy when the charred bodies of the two victims were discovered inside a car. Families of the two victims filed a first information report (FIR) with Bharatpur Police in Rajasthan, alleging that the men were abducted and beaten by members of the Bajrang Dal unit in Haryana. Rinku Saini, who was named as an accused in the FIR, was arrested on Friday.
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