Agra: “Buri nazar wale tera mu kala (Shame on evil eyes)”, read the signage that Mohammed Arshad (24) brought back home from the market sometime last year. Arshad hung it up on the unpainted brick wall of his house in Islamnagar with a shoelace. Neighbours stared but no one dared ask Arshad anything.
Standing near his house, which has remained locked since 18 December, Nasrin, an Islamnagar resident, said, “He used to hurl abuses. We never visited their house. We spoke to the mother only when he was not around.”
Islamnagar woke up to tragedy on 1 January this year. Arshad had confessed to murdering his mother and four sisters, including two minors, in the night in a Lucknow hotel, some 340 km away from his house.
In a video recorded by Arshad after the murders, he accused his neighbours of harassment and bids to sell his sisters and grab his land, as well as his desire to convert to Hinduism and build a temple. Neighbours, however, said that they never saw him practising Hinduism. He also started the video with the greeting, “Assalamwalaikum”.
The police have booked Arshad and his father, Mohammed Badar, under Section 103 (punishment for murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
Everyone in Islamnagar has an Arshad story to tell. Some alleged that he used to beat up his wife with a belt, others said his mother was always scared of him, and still others pointed out that he picked up fights with his neighbours. Some called him “mentally unstable”, whereas others called him a nuisance. But, the common sentiment in all the stories was that the 24-year-old was aggressive.
Locals said his wife left him just two months after their marriage due to continuous physical and sexual abuse. The sisters, they said, hardly spoke with anyone or stepped out. They also claimed that Arshad’s family would not be home after every two or three months for 20-25 days. On returning, they would tell everyone they had been in Ajmer.
On 1 January morning, five bodies were recovered from room no. 109 of Hotel Sharanjeet in Lucknow. Arshad surrendered at the Naka Hindola police station the same morning. His father, Mohammed Badar, is absconding. Police sources said Arshad dropped his father at the Charbagh railway station before walking into the thana.
Sources said they are probing if Arshad and his father made any past attempts to kill their five family members.
“Some neighbours said the mother told them about Arshad and his father beating them up and threatening to kill them. We are investigating if the duo attempted to do this earlier,” a source in the Agra police told ThePrint.
Discussing Arshad’s video, Sabir, an Islamnagar resident, said, “He is trying to frame the entire basti. It is a free country. Who will stop a Muslim man from converting to Hinduism?”
Arshad’s family had been living in the area for over a decade, he said.
“If he wanted to make a mandir, he should have made it. No one would have stopped him. Did he ever get construction material for it? No. He killed his mother and sisters with his father and is now trying to give it a communal angle,” added Sabir.
As the police hunt for the father and await the post-mortem reports, numerous angles are afloat on the motive behind the murders. According to sources, Arshad has refused to take back his claim that the neighbours’ harassment pushed him to commit the crime. However, the claim remains unsubstantiated.
“So far, nothing has surfaced during our investigation to support Arshad’s allegations regarding the neighbours or his other claims,” a senior Agra police officer told ThePrint.
The 24-year-old and his father would sell clothes on a cycle. Arshad would sell grocery items outside his house as well. Behind the now-locked gates of his house stand a cot with clothes heaped on it and a cycle. The rooms are guarded by red curtains.
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‘Murders had been coming’
For most Islamnagar residents, the situation in Arshad’s house had always been volatile, and the murders had been coming. Police sources in both Agra and Lucknow called the murder “well planned and pre-meditated”.
“Earlier, they lived in a smaller house, and it did not have high gates. Everyone could see him beating his wife with belts. There was constant screaming. The father would also beat up their mother. But no one could interfere. Arshad would come running to hit us and hurl abuses, so we maintained a distance,” said Samina, a neighbour.
“One day, I asked Asma (Arshad’s mother) how she was doing. She told me she could not talk because if Arshad saw her stepping out and talking, he would beat her up. His father and he tortured the women in the house. On some days, we would think that the father-son would end up killing them. That is what has happened,” added Samina.
When the police reached out to his ex-wife, she substantiated the claims of the neighbours, saying Arshad was impossible to live with, according to the sources.
In his video, Arshad said: “I felt fed up with the people in the basti. I killed my sisters with my own hands. When police see this video — the people of the basti are responsible.”
He claimed that the neighbours harassed his family for land and that no one helped despite complaints to the police and BJP leaders. The family, he added, roamed and slept on the streets for days in the cold.
“They snatched our house. I have the papers of the house…,” he said, claiming he kept the papers aiming to build a mandir.
The 24-year-old also named some neighbours, claiming they, as part of a racket, wanted to traffick his sisters to Hyderabad, which, he claimed, eventually pushed him to slit their wrists and strangle them. His sisters were aged 9, 16, 18 and 19 years.
In the same video, his father, Mohammed Badar, is seen suffocating one of the sisters. “Look at her. She is about to die,” he said on camera.
According to Arshad, the neighbours called them “Bangladeshi”, and they had been wanting to convert to Hinduism. “They took away half our plot and wanted to take the rest. We wanted to convert to Hinduism. Only mandir should stand in our house,” he added.
Speaking to ThePrint, a senior Lucknow police officer said, “He made the women and the girls drink alcohol and sedated them. Then, the father-son killed them. It is premeditated murder.”
Theories & CCTV footage
Police have called the case complicated, more so because Arshad has been sticking to his claims. However, neighbours have come up with theories on probable motives, painting a darker picture of the cold-blooded murders.
Their theories suggest that the father sexually assaulted the eldest daughter, who died two years ago. His other daughters, they speculate, faced the same treatment, with the father-son duo eventually killing them. The police in Agra and Lucknow are also investigating this angle, but things will only be clear once they have Mohammed Badar and the autopsies.
“They had an elder daughter, who died some two years ago. The father’s behaviour with her was not right. One day, Arshad told some people that he felt fed up with the women and girls and that he would kill them and sell their kidneys,” said Jyoti, another Islamnagar resident.
Some others claimed Arshad and his father wanted to get rid of the five and hatched a plan to mislead the police. “We are probing all angles,” a Lucknow police officer said.
Arshad filed a police complaint on 18 December, mentioning that his neighbours wanted to grab his land and that he wanted to convert to Hinduism. Sources said that when the police called him within 24 hours, he told them he was going to Ajmer and then Lucknow and would come back and meet them.
Now, the police have called in for questioning the neighbours Arshad has named in the video.
“My son and husband have been picked up for questioning because Arshad named them. We are not scared because we did not do anything. Arshad is a nuisance. He fought with everyone. One day, he fought with the neighbour who runs a shop next to their house after a chocolate box fell,” Meena said.
Standing beside her, Banu, Arshad’s immediate neighbour, nodded. The police have also called in her husband and brother-in-law for questioning. According to Banu, Arshad’s father had sold them the land near their house for Rs seven lakh, and they did not grab it as Arshad’s police complaint said. Police sources said photos of a cheque and bank account details have revealed that the family transferred money into Arshad’s bank account to buy the land.
Arshad’s complaint mentioned two instances of neighbours harassing and beating him — first on 16 December, and then on 18 December. “So far, we have not found any evidence of his claims,” a senior police officer said.
CCTV footage with the police showed a verbal spat between groups of people on 16 December. Later, on 18 December, an auto hit the store Arshad had been running outside his house, according to CCTV footage.
Arshad said in his complaint that the incident was a conspiracy by his neighbours to cause losses to him. However, investigators said nothing has, so far, been found to support that the incident was intentional.
Then, on 18 December, the shopkeeper, whose child accidentally dropped Arshad’s chocolate box, apologised to Arshad. However, the 24-year-old still got violent and threw a brick at them, according to Banu.
“He would keep bricks and stones on the terrace to throw at us,” Samina added.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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