The Mangaluru city police likely knew that Ashraf’s death was a mob lynching on the day it occurred, contrary to their claims, and delayed registering an FIR to allow the accused to go scot free, a recent fact-finding report has alleged.
Ashraf, a 38-year-old man from Kerala, was beaten to death by a mob during a cricket tournament in Kudupu, Mangaluru, on April 27 this year. Local activists learnt from eyewitnesses that a man had questioned Ashraf about drinking water that was meant for the cricket players. He asked Ashraf if he was Pakistani. Things reportedly went downhill from there. The same night, the activists had begun to raise an alarm about the crime and also alleged that the mob was instigated by Ravindra Nayak, the husband of a former BJP councillor. Nayak is not named in the FIR and has not been arrested.
Read: Mangaluru mob lynching: Activists accuse police of inaction against man with BJP links
The fact-finding was carried out by the Karnataka units of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties Karnataka, the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), and the All India Lawyers Association for Justice (AILAJ). The report titled ‘Lost Fraternity: A Mob Lynching in Broad Daylight’ was released on Saturday, June 28, in Bengaluru.
The fact-finding team visited Mangaluru between May 9 and 10 and spoke to several people, including Ashraf’s mother and brother. They also spoke to several activists and to police officers, including Siddharth Goyal, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order). The team noted that they could not speak to any eyewitnesses who did not come forward due to the “climate of fear” and had to rely on activists who had been told of the events by eyewitnesses.
The report alleges that the police did know about the lynching as then Mangaluru Police Commissioner Anupam Agrawal and DCP Siddharth Goyal had visited the crime scene on the day Ashraf was killed and had likely seen his body, which clearly bore marks of an assault. Despite this, the police only registered an Unnatural Death Report (UDR) and not an FIR, which points to a deliberate attempt to cover up the crime and protect Ashraf’s attackers, the report alleged.
The team demanded that the investigation be handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and that a special public prosecutor be appointed for the case.
Visible injuries
The then Mangaluru Police Commissioner Anupam Agrawal had said during a press conference on April 29, two days after the lynching, that the police did not suspect foul play initially because the body did not have any visible injuries. So initially an Unnatural Death Report (UDR) was registered. It was only after obtaining the preliminary opinion of the doctors who did the post-mortem that the police suspected that Ashraf had been assaulted, Agrawal had said.
Pictures of Ashraf’s body when it was found show that he was dressed only in his jeans. His chest and feet were bare, and his body was caked with mud.
Although these pictures were taken from a distance, photos of his body taken by activists after the post-mortem was done clearly show injuries on Ashraf’s arm and on his chest a little below the neck. They appear to be cuts made by a sharp object. These would have been visible to anyone who saw the body on the day he was killed. There were similar open cuts on both his thighs and knees. There were several other marks on his body.
The fact-finding report said that Ashraf’s brothers Abdul Jabbar and Abdul Hameed were very disturbed when they saw their brother’s body in the mortuary on April 30.
“Heinous stab wounds were on the victim’s body, so intense that it was difficult for them to even look. There were ‘crack’ (use of a stick) and slash marks on the body, indicating that swords had been used,” the report stated.
Videos shared confidentially with the fact-finding team show that Ravindra Nayak was present at the crime scene while the police were on the spot.
Senior officers visit crime scene
One of the most disturbing things to emerge from the fact-finding is the statement of DCP Siddharth Goyal, who said that Agrawal, he, and Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Dhanya Nayak had visited the spot on the day that Ashraf was found dead.
“On the day it happened, all the senior officers, including me, ACP, commissioner sir, everybody visited the spot on the same day,” Goyal told the fact-finding team.
However, during the press conference on April 29, Anupam Agrawal made no mention of the fact that he and other senior officers had visited the spot.
This raises a crucial question. Why were the senior-most officers of the commissionerate visiting the spot where an unidentified body was found if there was no suspicion of foul play as Agrawal had claimed, let alone the occurrence of a mob lynching?
Asked why, despite seeing Ashraf’s body on the day he was killed, only a UDR was registered, Goyal told the fact-finding team, “We don’t give opinions.”
He then went on to say that the police called the scene of crime officers and the mobile forensics van. “Both experts were called on the same day. They have the opinion that examining the body from a scientific angle, we are not ready to give you a cause of death right now. And the cause of death is given by scientific experts, who are designated authority to give their opinion in that case. The conclusion is that to get the post mortem done, you need to register an Unnatural Death Case under Section 174(c).”
Goyal was referring to Section 194 in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which replaced the CrPC.
Suspension of low-ranking officers
The Mangaluru police suspended three low-ranking police officers on May 1, three days after the lynching. TNM had previously reported that the Mangaluru Rural Inspector, an intelligence officer, and a beat cop were suspended for “withholding information (about the mob lynching) from senior officers who had visited the spot”.
However, the fact-finding team has raised doubts about the plausibility of low-ranking officers withholding information when senior officers, including the Commissioner himself, had visited the crime scene.
“How is it possible that the jurisdictional police inspector failed to inform the senior officials that this was a mob lynching if the inspector already knew about it as indicated in the suspension order? How is it that senior officials did not ask the inspector if he had more information about what caused the death? It is evident to the fact-finding team that this is an attempt by the senior officials trying to escape responsibility by claiming lack of knowledge / information and blaming it on lower rank police officials alone,” the report said.
Alleging that “it does appear” that both Agrawal and Goyal knew about lynching on the very day it occurred, the report said, “By delaying the registration of the FIR, they aided those accused of mob lynching to go scot free… At whose behest did the police delay the registration of the FIR?”
‘Pro-Pakistan’ slogans
The fact-finding team noted that the claim that Ashraf had raised a “Pakistan, Pakistan” slogan was used to justify the attack on him. “Even if the slogan was raised, it cannot be any justification for the mob to have lynched Ashraf to death,” the report said.
The report also stated that the Supreme Court had in the Balwant Singh vs State of Punjab case said that raising the ‘Khalistan zindabad’ or ‘Raj karega Khalsa’ slogan did not amount to sedition or promoting enmity between groups when it was merely two lone individuals who raised the slogan, which had not elicited a response from anyone.
Justice for Ashraf
Rukhiya, Ashraf’s mother, spoke at length to the fact-finding team about her son and sought justice for him. She talked about how he developed a mental illness as a child and how as an adult he chose to work as a ragpicker and was happy.
She was quoted in the report as saying, “Why was he beaten to death? What wrong did he do? Why did they do this to my boy? He wandered for miles and miles and never got a single scratch. I used to worry and tell him, ‘If you don’t carry a phone, how will your mother know that you’re ok?’… He liked walking through Mangalore and packing up bottles. He enjoyed that and was happy doing it. Those who killed my son should not be let free. They should be punished.”