New Delhi: After the murder charge against the accused in the Tabrez Ansari lynching case was dropped, his wife Shahista Parween has said she wants a CBI probe in the case.
Ansari, a 24-year-old Muslim youth from Jharkhand, was allegedly beaten up by a mob, tied to a pole and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Hanuman” on 17 June, after being suspected of motorcycle theft. Ansari died in a hospital four days later. Of the 13 people named in the charge sheet, 11 are still absconding.
The police Tuesday watered down the charge against the accused from murder (Section 302 of the IPC) to culpable homicide not amounting to murder (Section 304 of the IPC), after a post-mortem concluded that Ansari died of a heart attack.
“How can a 24-year-old healthy man die of a cardiac arrest for no reason? Only a blind person would believe that given the video evidence. They beat him up ruthlessly, without any remorse. Isn’t it obvious that it’s the beating that killed him?” Parween told ThePrint.
“We demand a CBI probe into this, since it is clear that the police don’t want to help us. It is because of the police that Tabrez lost his life in the first place. They got to know about him being beaten up that very night, but they delayed taking him to the hospital.”
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‘Police is protecting the accused’
A three-member probe team headed by Anjaneyulu Dodde, deputy commission of the Seraikela Kharswan district, had said in a July report that negligence on the part of the police and doctors had led to Ansari’s death.
“There was negligence on the part of the police and the doctors. While the police reached late, the doctors did not see (diagnose) skull injury,” Dodde had said.
Now, the 19-year-old Parween has said the police are deliberately trying to shield the accused.
“Since day one, they have had no intention of delivering justice. They are shielding the accused. I want justice, that’s all I know,” she said.
‘Court needs to intervene’
Advocate Altaf Hussain, who is representing Parween in court, said the change in the charge sheet requires court’s intervention. “I have filed a petition in the court challenging the charge sheet, let’s see what happens,” Hussain told ThePrint.
Ansari’s uncle, Masroor, who has been accompanying Parween to court, said the family continues to have faith in the judicial system.
“If the district court doesn’t listen to us, we will go to the high court or the Supreme Court. Everything we do will be within the legal norms. We still have hope for justice,” Masroor said.
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The local police is almost always colluding with local politicians and is also quite incompetent. At a minimum such cases should be monitored by the high court. One can only hope that someday police and judicial reforms will become a priority for central and state governments.
For the family it is important that justice is done. However, we should step back a little and ask ourselves whether this is the country we had set out to be in 1947 / 1950. It does not matter beyond a point which party’s government is in power in the state where the death by lynching happens, whether the case is investigated by the state police or transferred to the CBI. This weakens the rule of law and social harmony in India. It tarnishes India’s global reputation. When India’s envoy in Washington accuses the entire media of anti India bias, we should ask ourselves why the entire western media scrum now carries this image of our country.