Bihar police gave a shocking update regarding the Muslim man who was hanged in Samastipur Bihar on February 16, after the assailant questioned him over cow slaughter.
According to the officer investigating the case, financial disputes were the motive for the brutal attack on Mohammad Khalil Alam, a small Janata Dal (United) worker who is alleged to be in debt to one of the attackers, Anurag Jha alias Bittu.
Samastipur Police Inspector Hriday Kant explained that the arrested assailants confessed that they carried out the murder for money and for no other reason.
Alam has not returned the loan despite repeated warnings by Jha, said Samastipur SHO Bikram Acharya, a member of the special investigation team (SIT) formed to investigate the case.
Acharya further explains the chronology of the incident, whereby on 16 February Bittu and his friends met Alam in Musrigharari and persuaded him to come with them to poultry farm owned by Vipul Jha, in Vasdeopur village. There, the perpetrators then transferred Alam’s SIM card to Vipul’s cell phone and called his wife Nemat Khatoon to demand the ₹2.75 lakh which he allegedly owed. They then proceed to beat him to death.
On 17 February, Alam’s older brother, Mohammad Sitare, made a missing persons report at the Musrigharari Police station. The next day, Alam’s body was found burned in a ditch on the bank of the Budhi Gandak river. Vipul was later arrested the same day. Bittu then released a video full of hate speech on social media on February 21.
Vipul’s interrogation resulted in the arrest of Bittu and two others, Kishan Jha and Rajesh Mishra, while the fifth suspect, Satyavachan Singh is still on the run.
Both the police and local officials agreed that there was no communal angle to the incident, and that the perpetrators shared the video of the crime in the hope of creating a communal situation in which to escape the crime they had committed.
The police also emphasized that the perpetrators did not intend to kill Alam, they only wanted to threaten him but he died due to the brutality of their beatings.
