UP Police says the carcass of cow that resulted in violence in Bulandshahr was killed with a licensed gun

By Saurabh Sharma

Uttar Pradesh police on Tuesday arrested three people in connection with killing of a cow on the intervening night of December 2 in Mahav village of Bulandshahr district which led to violence following day.

The Bulandshahr police said that acting on the tip off, a team of police led by Superintendent of Police (SP) city Atul Kumar Srivastava arrested Nadeem, Raees and Kala from Pashu Paith Bazaar in Syana, Bulandshahr early in the morning around 7 am. However, one of the accused Haroon, escaped.

The three have been accused of killing cows in past and were in fact planning to kill another cow when they were caught, said Srivastava.

On December 3, a police inspector and a civilian was killed when a mob turned violent in an alleged case of cow killing in Mahav village in Bulandshahr. Angry villagers and members of various Hindu groups brought the animal remains in tractor-trolley to the Chingarwathi police post and demanded action against the culprits. In no time the protest took an ugly turn claiming lives of two people.

An FIR was filed by Bulandshahr district coordinator of Hindutva group Bajarang Dal

Yogesh Raj with local police station on December 3. It named seven people including two minors. None of three people arrested today are named in the FIR

The accused were cordoned off and arrested along with the equipments they used to kill cow in Bulandshahr including a licenced gun, he said. The accused were identified on the basis of “technical evidence” available with the police, said the SP.

They used licenced gun to kill the cow and distributed its flesh among themselves and discarded carcass in the fields. “They have confessed to their crime of killing the cow on the night of December 1 in the interrogation and further investigation is underway,” said Srivastava.

The police has confiscated a licenced gun, two knives, a rope, one wooden log, one gypsy car and one chopper from these accused.

Yogesh Raj, one of the three main accused in the violence that took lives of two, is still on the run and on December 5 last he released a video claiming his innocence while Vishal Tyagi, one of the main accused, surrendered before the local court last Monday. Tyagi is also a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Another accused, Shikhar Agarwal is also absconding.

The police is investigating the killing of police inspector and the civilian in the violence. A soldier with Indian Army, Jitendra Mallik alias Jeetu Fauji has been arrested and interrogated in this case.

With inputs from Mohammad Nadeem in Bulandshahr