Rajasthan police froze a bank account with deposits around Rs 3 lakh collected on behalf of the wife of murder accused Shambhulal Regar.
New Delhi: Days after more than 500 people contributed to a fund created for Rajasthan’s Rajsamand murder accused Shambhulal Regar’s kin, a parallel crowdfunding effort has seen donations coming from currently over 436 citizens in support of the victim’s family.
Migrant labourer Mohammed Afrazul was killed in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand in an alleged love jihad case last week. After his arrest, Regar is reported to have admitted to beating and then setting Afrazul on fire.
The Rajasthan police Tuesday had frozen a bank account with deposits around Rs 3 lakh collected on behalf of Regar’s wife, Sita. According to a report in The Indian Express, 516 people from across the country had donated money to the account in Sita’s name.
However, the crowdfunding campaign to support Afrazul’s kin elicited response from over 436 people, and is still ongoing.
Started on 9 December, the campaign ‘India’s Shame: Support Afrazul’s Family’ aims to raise Rs 1 crore. While Rs 50 lakh would be to support the deceased’s family, the other Rs 50 lakh is aimed at setting up a legal fund to build a strong case.
“It was an initiative by citizens who felt it was important to support the family (of Afrazul). And then suddenly it spread and now we have more than 400 people,” Bilal Zaidi, founder of the crowdfunding platform, CrowdNewsing, told ThePrint.
Zaidi took to social media pointing out what he calls a disparity between the two sets of ‘donors’. “All the responsible citizens of this country need to wake up to the reality of what is happening. They need to…wake up to the details…(about) the people…who contributed to that (hate) campaign,” he said.
“After investigation we’ll know whether it was genuinely crowdfunded or just a handful of people doing it on behalf of others…” Zaidi added.