Jharkhand lynchings: State-appointed team probes incident, records statement of affected families

Jamshedpur: The two-member committee set up by Jharkhand government to probe the recent lynching incidents in Seraikela-Kharswan and East Singhbhum districts on Thursday visited both the places and recorded the statement of the affected families.

“We visited the affected villages including Shobhapur under Rajnagar police station in Seraikela-Kharswan district and Nagadih under Bagbera police station in East Singhbhum district and recorded the statements of the villagers,” said the Commissioner (Kolhan) Pradeep Kumar, who along with DIG (Kolhan) Prabhat Kumar constituted the probe committee.

The probe committee would cover all possible angles of the incident, he said while rubbishing the child lifting episode as reason behind the killings.

Preliminary investigation, he said, suggested that the lynching was pre-planned and it had nothing to do with child lifting but rumour was spread in this regard.

During their interaction with the villagers, Kumar said even the villagers have admitted that no child lifting or child missing incident had taken place.

The probe team had visited Shobhapur villager, where the first incident of lynching on suspicion of child lifting had taken place in the early hours of 18 May.

“We have recorded the statements of the villagers and the affected families,” he said.

Asked whether the child lifting was a real reason behind both lynching incident, the commissioner denied it outright but attributed rumour of child lifting as the cause of the incidents even though no incident of child lifting had taken place in the villages.

To query as what the victims were doing in the village in the early hours and how such a large number of villagers assembled at the spot, he said the probe team was probing all aspects of the incidents.

The team would also visit minority-dominated Dhatkidih under Bistupur police station and Mango under Mango police station to investigate the violence that was witnessed during a protest march organized by an organization to protest the lynching four persons of their community in Rajnagar police station limit on 18 May morning on suspicion of being child lifters.

Apart from Rajnagar incident, three persons including two brothers belonging to majority community were also lynched for the same reason in Nagadih in Bagbera on 18 May night.