Mob of at least 20 people attacked Junaid and others, accusing them of carrying beef.
The arrest of four of its men for the murder of 16-year-old Junaid Khan, is nothing less conspiracy, feels Khambi village in Haryana's Palwal. The general feeling is that the men of the village cannot commit murder.
One of the arrested men, Rameshwar, is an official of Delhi government. Two others -- Gaurav and Chanderprakash -- work in the private sector at Faridabad. The fourth was Pradeep, a student of engineering. A fifth accused, who claimed to have attacked the boys while in a drunken state, has also been arrested.
Junaid Khan, who was on his way home to Haryana's Ballabhgarh on Wednesday with his brother Haseeb and cousins after Eid shopping, was stabbed to death on a train. The mob of at least 20 people had attacked them, accusing them of carrying beef, the relatives had said. The police said the fight had broken out over seats.
The arrested men did not agree to an identification parade, but Haseeb, who survived the attack, says he has identified them. "The police called me yesterday and I saw them," he said.
The police crackdown came after Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad described Junaid Khan's killing as "extremely painful and shameful".
The job of the police was made more difficult by the fact that none of the travellers in the train had come forward to volunteer information. Mohinder Singh, a senior officer of the railways, said, "We zeroed in on this village is because we got intelligence reports that a lot of villagers regularly travelled on this particular compartment ".
The villagers contend that it is a particularly slipshod method of policing.
"Around 700 men from this village travel daily by trains to work in Delhi, Faridabad, Ballabhgarh and other surrounding areas," said Tika Ram, a villager. "This is a village of Brahmins and we have never been involved in such fights inside a train. All these men take the train together maybe, but that does not make them culprits," he added.
Gaurav Kumar's family alleged that he was being framed. "They raided our village in the middle of the night, and picked up Gaurav," said his sister. Rameshwar's family refused to comment.
The main suspect in the case though is yet to be caught -- a man seen riding pillion on a bike in the CCTV footage is suspected to have stabbed Junaid to death.