"The whole of Bharat is with you," a woman is seen telling the Alwar dairy farmer murder suspect.
New Delhi:
Two videos had brought out the horror of the Alwar lynching: 55-year-old dairy owner Pehlu Khan yanked by his neck, thrown to the ground, kicked by cow vigilantes in Rajasthan early this month. A fortnight later, a third video has emerged. This shows one of the five men arrested for Khan's murder being applauded and eulogised by the leader of the cow vigilante group; all this and more while the 19-year-old was in the custody of the police.
Bipin Yadav, who was seen in the earlier video beating Mr Khan with his belt, had been brought to his college by the police to let him write his annual examination. Kamal
Didi, as she identifies herself, also showed up at the college.
"Don't worry Bipin, the whole of
Bharat is with you," she is seen telling the suspect in the video. Then, she turns to others and continues: "These boys are like (Chandrasekhar) Azad and Bhagat Singh, they have done nothing wrong". The police guard escorting the teenager to college does not intervene.
The saffron-robed woman is the president of Rasthriya Mahila Gau Rakshak Dal, the same group that led a mob of 100 people to a hotel in Jaipur, alleging that it was serving beef. They backed off only after the administration agreed to seal the hotel.
In the video, she goes on: "Don't worry Bipin, this is just a matter of few days. After that something will happen which you won't even be able to imagine right now". She also advises Bipin Yadav to not sit idle in jail but "teach them" about cow protection.
When NDTV contacted her, she confirmed meeting Bipin Yadav at the college. "I just went to assure him of our support," she says.
Pehlu Khan's family has received no assurances of support, or justice. This week, they headed to the heart of the national capital, Jantar Mantar, over a 100 km from their village in Rajasthan Nuh district to seek justice.
Mr Khan was killed by the mob of cow vigilantes attacked the dairy farmer in Alwar, who assumed he was smuggling the cows for slaughter. But apart from the five arrested after an outcry against the mob lynching which also echoed in parliament, the police haven't arrested six others named in the FIR.
"I want punishment for those who killed my son," says his 85-year-old mother Angoori Devi. Adds his eldest daughter Abida Khan, 26: "We have come up to Delhi to get heard".
The Rajasthan police say they have formed three teams to identify the other accused seen in the video. But there are no clear answers why action hasn't been taken to catch the six named in the police complaint. Or why the police haven't analysed the phone records of the 6 missing accused to track them down.