Police personnel in the Basera village in Dadri after the incident.
Amit Sisodia and Deepak Raghav, both in their 20s, spend most of the day checking job sites and chatting with a group of friends on the internet. Most are graduates and all of them are unemployed.
Amit and Deepak live in Jaitwarpur, just 15 km away from Bisada village in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, which is seething with communal tension after a Muslim man was lynched by a mob over rumours that he had killed a calf and eaten beef.
Amit Sisodia, 22, says he learnt about the mob killing on WhatsApp. Some of the nine men arrested for the murder were his classmates in school and like him, are unemployed graduates. He believes they are all innocent.
"They were unemployed and roamed all day. Neighbours didn't like it and framed them in the case," he alleges.
Deepak Raghav, 24, an arts graduate was forced to work as contract labour at a power plant for six months last year, since he couldn't get a job.
There are hundreds of such young men, unemployed or underemployed, in the villages of tense Dadri. The administration believes they hold the key to de-escalating tension in the area. At a peace meeting held with villagers on Wednesday, the district magistrate said most of the youth in this area need "ideological surgery".
With lots of free time, young men like Amit and Deepak discuss the murder of Mohammad Akhlaq in Bisada every day, online and offline.
"There should be a ban on beef. Despite a ban on cow slaughter, cows are being killed every day here. I was sent a video on YouTube the other day where a woman was telling a policeman that a cow was killed, but the policeman did nothing," says Deepak.
Worried officials say local groups like the Rashtrawadi Pratap Sena are tapping into the restlessness of Dadri's young. The Sena was set up five years ago to protest against reservation in jobs and has at least a 1,000 members in Dadri, mostly unemployed or underemployed young Hindu men.
Like Jeetinder Rana, 22, a science graduate who scored 68 per cent, but works as a delivery boy. "Thanks to reservation, the only jobs left for us are those of guards or delivery boys," he says bitterly.
A few of the young men accused of the Bisada murder are also rumoured to be members of the Sena. The Sena's chief Lalit Rana firmly says, "We have no role in that incident. Yes we have a lot of events at Bisada and have lots of members from there, but we never propagate anything on communal lines."
"Groups like the Samadhan Sena and Rashtrawadi Pratap Sena don't have an openly Hindutva agenda, but they have a lot of Hindu hard-liners in their leadership," an official said. Govind Chaudhary, the president of the Samadhan Sena, another local group, has been recently booked under the Goonda Act by the Uttar Pradesh police.
Local intelligence has been asked to keep an eye on the activities of these groups.
After the mob killing, controversial statements of politicians like the BJP's Sangeet Som on beef have also kept Dadri on the edge.
In at least four villages around Bisada that have a sizeable Muslim population, the youth of the minority community too are exercised over rumours that are shared on social media every day.
25-year-old Rashid Khan from a neighbouring village says he fears for his life after the Bisada murder and has no faith in the local police. "The police have not been able to arrest all the accused. People from the Hindu community are now projecting themselves as more powerful," he says.
Rashid Khan has a bachelor's degree in business administration, but like Amit and Deepak has been unable to find a job. For now he runs a medical store.