Victim Manohar Lal after the murder (left) and when alive (right), Image: Organiser
Pictures of a man’s severed body have been making rounds of the internet since last evening. The man has been identified as Manohar Lal, a Dalit a resident of Bandal Village in Salooni tehsil of Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh. The reports and locals claimed that the man was butchered to death by the accused for allegedly having an affair with their sister.
After the intervention and protests of the locals and the Hindu Jagran Manch the Himachal Pradesh police arrested three accused linked with the case so far. As per the details obtained by Organiser, the accused men have been identified as Shabbir Ali, Shafaqat, Mussafir Hussain and a woman Farida. A juvenile was also detained by the police for interrogation.
A First Information Report in this case was registered on June 6, after the man went missing, his dead body was recovered from under a waterfall on June 9 by the officials of the Indian Reserve Batallion (IRB).
Manohar Lal, 25, was the only son of his parents and is survived by his parents and three sisters. He was the only breadwinner of the family of three. His work was to load material from the ground to the hilltop on a mule (Khacchar).
On June 6, Manohar left his home around 7:25 in the morning after his employer called him. He took two of the mules with him, and after reaching the house of the culprits he went missing. The family filed a missing persons report the same day, however, the administration failed to locate him.
They searched every nook and corner of the village but failed to locate him, amid investigations, the officials of the IRB informed them about gunny bags under the waterfall. They collected as many as three gunny bags from the spot, they were stuffed with a dead body, it was male.
The body was severed into seven pieces, the head and limbs were chopped off from the torso and it was then divided into two pieces. The bags under the waterfall were covered with large stones.
The state general secretary of the Hindu Jagran Manch, Kamal Gautam who went to meet the victim’s family on June 9 told Organiser in a telephonic interview on June 14 that, the police have detained multiple people and have arrested three culprits so far. He said, the local media under the influence of the administration tried to cover up the issue as not a single report in the case was published till June 13, until the national media picked the case and the picture of Manohar’s butchered body went viral on social media.
About the family he said, the aged parents are in a vulnerable situation following their son’s demise, they are poor people, he said. Until his visit, the family believed that being poor and Dalit they will not be severed with justice.
In a video Manohar’s mother can be seen crying and asking the culprits to be hanged. The house of this family is located in the village where there is no road, it takes an hour’s walk to reach their home from Bandal Village. The village is 400 kilometres from the state capital Shimla. Also, the spot where Manohar’s body was recovered takes a 5-hour walk from the village to reach.
Gautam said after Manohar went missing two of the Mules were standing there, on the murder spot, till the body was recovered.
Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Vinod Kumar Dhiman told media that, “Though the victim was Hindu and the accused are Muslims, there was no communal angle in the matter. The victim and accused were having an affair. We have arrested five people, two juvenile females, and three adults. Prima facie, there is no evidence of the communal angle in the murder,” he said.
Following the missing persons FIR sections of murder IPC 302 were imposed against the accused, no press note has been issued by the police as of now.
On June 14, the locals and the Hindu activists called for a massive protest in the village, the demanded the accused to be given stringent punishment as exemplary action. They raised slogans like ‘police prashashan murdabad..hatyaron ko fansi do..’ against the administration.
Gautam said, the accused family belongs to the bakarwal jaati and live mostly on the hilltop, they rear cattles including cow, the family is also involved in cattle smuggling, he added.
Notably, Superintendent of Police, Chamba, Abhishek Yadav told media that those sharing pictures of the severed body of the victim on social media will be punished by the administration.
Organiser will update this report with details of the FIR as soon as we have it.
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