New Delhi: A man accused of carrying beef was beaten to death yesterday in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh district. Police sources said Alimuddin alias Asgar Ansari was carrying the “banned meat” in a Maruti van.

A group of people stopped him near Bajartand village and brutally attacked him, the sources said. His van was set on fire too. Police personnel took him to a hospital where he died during the course of treatment.

“It’s premeditated murder,” Additional Director General of Police R.K. Mallik told IANS.

“Asgar was chargesheeted for child abduction and murder,” the officer said, adding that some people involved in beef trade hatched a conspiracy to kill him. “The killers have been identified.”

This is second such case in Jharkhand in the last three days. In Giridih district, a mob thrashed a person and set on fire his house after a cow head was found.

Police arrest four over Muslim teen’s murder

Police said yesterday they had arrested four people over the murder of a 15-year-old Muslim boy on a train, the latest in a slew of hate crimes against minorities.

A group of men attacked Junaid Khan and his three brothers last week in an apparent row over seats as they travelled home by train from New Delhi, killing him and injuring one of his brothers.

Deputy superintendent Mohinder Singh said police had arrested four men and identified the chief suspect in the killing, who had yet to be arrested.

Media reports said two of the men arrested were local government employees.

“We have also taken many eye witness accounts from the daily travellers on this route and are focusing on arresting the knife attacker,” said Singh by telephone from Faridabad. The news came a day after protests were held in several Indian cities over the recent killings.

Modi speech will not change anything, Owaisi says

Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi has expressed scepticism over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s criticism of killings in the name of cows and said mere statements will not have any impact on the ground.

Owaisi was reacting to the PMs speech in Ahmedabad yesterday, in which he said people cannot take law into their hands in the name of cows. Speaking in Hyderabad Owaisi recalled that the PM had made a similar statement last year but did not have any impact.

“All this is nothing but lip-service because even after the first statement of the PM there was no impact. In fact lynchings, killings and assaults by ‘gau-rakhshaks’ increased”, he said.

Owaisi alleged cow vigilantes were getting direct and indirect support from the BJP and the Sangh Parivar organisations.

— Agencies