A Jharkhand government probe into 2017 lynchings reveals the state's brazen communal bias

On the night of 17 June 2019, Tabrez Ansari visited his aunt’s house to seek her blessings before leaving town the next day to start his newly-married life. But as the 24-year-old returned home, a mob accused him of theft, tied him to a pole, forced him to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and beat him through the night. Despite several calls, the Jharkhand Police did not arrive at the scene of the crime, in the state’s Seraikela Kharsawan district, until the following morning. He was booked for robbery, taken to court, sent to jail and four days after the lynching, Ansari died. It was only after his death that the police registered a case against the mob that attacked him. In the original chargesheet, the mob was not charged with murder, but it was later included through a supplementary chargesheet after media reports highlighted the omission.

The circumstances of Ansari’s death were hardly an uncommon occurrence in Jharkhand. Between May 2015 and December 2018, the state witnessed as many as 17 deaths due to lynchings—out of a total of 44 across the country. Among them, seven men were killed in two separate incidents, both on 18 May 2017, in the Kolhan division of Jharkhand, within a 40-kilometre radius of Jamshedpur city. Four of them were killed in the same district where Ansari was lynched. Yet, following Ansari’s death, the prime minister Narendra Modi expressed measured condolences: “I am pained and those responsible will get stringent punishment but it is wrong on the part of the opposition to call Jharkhand a hub of lynching,” he said. The Bharatiya Janata Party has either helmed or been a part of every ruling coalition in Jharkhand since the state was formed in 2000. The 2014 state elections saw the BJP post its best performance in the state so far with 37 seats in the 81-member legislative assembly.

In the first incident of 18 May 2017, which happened during the morning hours, four Muslim cattle traders—Sheikh Halim, Mohammad Sajjad, Seraj Khan and Naim—were lynched in and around the Shobhapur village, in Seraikela Kharsawan. The first three were residents of a nearby village, Haldipokhar, and Naim lived in Ghatshila, a town in the state’s East Singhbhum district. In the second incident from that day, three upper-caste Hindu men—Vikas Verma and Gautam Verma, who were brothers, and their friend Gangesh Gupta—were killed in Nagadih village, in East Singhbhum.

On 22 May 2017, the Jharkhand government constituted a two-member committee of civic and police officials to probe the two incidents, under the supervision of the state’s home, prison and disaster management department. It comprised Pradeep Kumar, the Kolhan divisional commissioner, and Prabhat Kumar, the Kolhan deputy inspector general. In a press conference announcing the constitution of the committee, SKG Rahate, who was the state home secretary at the time, stated, “Their job is to probe the genesis of the rumours, people behind it, the purpose behind such an act, and several other angles that are unanswered so far.” The committee submitted its report in July 2017, and I obtained a copy of it under the right to information act later that year.

The investigation revealed clear biases against the Muslim community and provided an insight into the mindset of the local government machinery. The report contained discernible differences in how the committee members approached the lynching of Hindus and that of Muslims, and a failure to conduct a comprehensive independent investigation in both cases. In the Shobhapur case, the investigation was not focused on the perpetrators of the crime, but on the dietary habits of the deceased Muslim individuals, their reasons for visiting Shobhapur village and their alleged involvement with smuggling cattle meat. In sharp contrast, the investigation into the deaths of the three Hindus was briefly summarised as a result of a land dispute, and unrelated to the rumours of child lifting.

Just as Ansari was booked for robbery while the mob was ignored, throughout the committee’s report, the Muslim victims appear to be characterised and seen through a lens of criminality, whereas only the Hindus are shown as victims of a fatal attack. This distinction is brazen in the report. In the same vein, the report also goes beyond its mandate to arbitrarily criticise a local Muslim organisation called the Muslim Ekta Manch for organising protests against the lynching. It argued that the Manch could potentially become like the militant group, Indian Mujahideen. On its actual mandate, of investigating the circumstances the led to the lynchings, the committee fell woefully short.

The committee members spoke to residents of Nagadih, Shobhapur and Haldipokhar and also relied on reports submitted by the deputy commissioners of East Singhbhum and Seraikela Kharsawan. The committee’s report enclosed the details of the investigation carried out by the members, which included identifying “issue under inquiry” and the corresponding witness statement recorded. In both the lynching incidents, the committee concluded that the violence was triggered by rumours of child lifting. In Nagadih, the rumour was used as subterfuge by a group of villagers to settle an ongoing land dispute. Yet, as per the report, the committee appears to have overlooked the genesis of the child-lifting rumour—it merely notes that a week prior to the incidents, East Singhbhum’s Jadugoda village had seen two other lynchings due to child-lifting rumours.

There is no mention of any investigation of the origin of these child-lifting rumours, how they spread to these villages, or how they led to the lynchings. Even though the state police had arrested two people—Saurabh Kumar, a businessman and Shankar Gupta, a journalist—in May 2017, for spreading messages that allegedly triggered the rumours, the report makes no mention of any efforts to speak to either the accused or the officers investigating them. In Nagadih, the investigators did not speak to any independent witnesses on the ground before arriving at their conclusion. The report sought to justify this by noting, “After having reached Nagadih, we found that all male members of the village had fled.”

In its Shobhapur investigation, the committee does not provide any explanation for its failure to investigate the trigger for the violence. In contrast, the committee concluded that the lynchings in Nagadih arose out of a rivalry between the three Hindu men, and the village head and his gang, who were land brokers and considered the former their rivals. The committee established a clear motive behind the Nagadih lynching and its conspirators, although it did not disclose any evidence for this conclusion.

In both cases, the officers of the Rajnagar and Bagbera police stations—which exercised jurisdiction over Shobhapur and Nagadih respectively—were attacked by the mobs when they reached the scene of the crime and tried to intervene. Each police station thus registered two first information reports—one for the assault on the police and obstructing them from performing their duty, and another for the lynchings. These FIRs and their surrounding circumstances reveal glaring contradictions in the manner that the committee members and the Jharkhand Police approached the two incidents.

For instance, the state police did not register any FIR based on the complaints filed by the family members of the four Muslim victims. However, following the Nagadih lynchings, the police had registered a case on the basis of a complaint by Uttam Kumar Verma, the brother of two of the deceased, Gautam and Vikas. Moreover, the police included the charge of criminal conspiracy in the Nagadih incident but not in the Shobhapur lynchings. The Shobhapur FIR did not include a charge under Section 34 of Indian Penal Code either, which would have accused them with a common intention to commit murder.

The omission would imply that the police considered the Nagadih lynching to be a coordinated and premeditated attack on the three Hindu men, whereas the death of the four Muslim men was treated as spontaneous mob-violence. Since the Shobhapur lynchings were presented as a result of chaotic mob-violence, and not a planned or motivated attack, some of the accused in the attack received bail on the grounds that there were no specific charges against them.

The police arrested 12 people in the Shobhapur lynching case, including multiple members of one family—Bhagirath Jyotishi, an Oriya-Brahmin resident of the Seraikela Kharsawan district’s Kamalpur village; his sons, Kanhu Jyotishi and Bara Kanhu Jyotishi; as well as three others, Tarun Jyotishi, Krishna Jyotishi and Arun Jyotishi. I had reported on the two incidents for The Caravan in June 2017. At the time, YN Tiwari, the investigating officer from Rajnagar police station, told me Bhagirath had mobilised the mob. He also referred to a ritual of child sacrifice among Brahmin tantriks—adherent of a mystical Hindu sect—that had contributed to the narrative of child lifters circulating among the residents.

In July 2018, a fast-track court in Seraikela Kharsawan convicted 12 persons for obstructing the police officers during the Shobhapur incident. The convicts have since appealed before the Jharkhand high court and are currently out on bail. The trial in the Shobhapur lynching case is still going on. In the Nagadih case, the cases on obstructing the police and the lynching are currently pending against at least 27 accused individuals, most of whom are from the tribal communities. Yet, on 7 July this year, the chief minister Raghubar Das, claimed, “Jharkhand is the only state in the country where such cases are taken up on a fast-track basis with quick punishment to the guilty.”

The committee, like the police, appeared to make no efforts to identify the motive behind the attack on the Muslim men. At least two witnesses quoted in the report, Mohammad Mahujjudin and Abdul Hui—both residents of Shobhapur—had identified the four deceased Muslims as cattle traders. They told the committee members that the four of them used to buy cattle from Shobhapur and sell them at a weekly cattle fair in their native village, Haldipokhar. Pertinently, according to Nishant Akhilesh, an activist who visited Shobhapur as part of a fact-finding team deputed by the non-profit People’s Union for Civil Liberties following the lynchings, one of the accused, Kanhu Jyotishi, was also a cattle trader. When I visited Shobhapur in June 2017, Akhilesh told me that Jyotishi considered the deceased Muslim men as rivals in the cattle business. Yet, this aspect of an existing cattle-trade rivalry has no mention in the committee’s report.

Instead, the committee relied on Mahujjudin’s account to come to a conclusion that the four Muslim men smuggled cattle meat, even though he made no statement to this effect. Mahujjudin told the committee that he was a cattle trader himself, and that around four hundred to five hundred oxen were regularly sold at the cattle fair to buyers for sums that ranged from Rs 15,000 to Rs 18,000 each. He then noted that the four men also regularly bought oxen from Shobhapur early in the morning to sell them in the Haldipokhar market, and that they would bring the cattle back to the village by the evening if they were unable to make the sale. He further stated that one of the deceased, Naim would only buy strong oxen that could be used for farming.

Mohujjudin told the committee that the four men would also bring cattle meat from Jamshedpur and sell it to the butchers in Haldipokhar. But nowhere in his account did he tell the committee that the four men stole cattle or slaughtered it themselves. He identified them as “bel vyapaari”—ox traders. Similarly, Abdul Hui identified Halim as “involved in the business of buying and selling oxen.” The committee also quoted the officer incharge of the Potka police station, which exercises jurisdiction over Haldipokhar: “There are 45 traders in Haldipokhar, 27 of whom were traders from Hindu community and 18 from the Muslim community.”

Yet, in its conclusion the committee wrote that the four men “were ox traders and also involved in cattle theft.” Without any evidence provided in the report, the committee added, “They used to help sell cow or ox meat from illegal slaughterhouses in Haldipokhar to Jamshedpur. From the inputs and during the questioning, it was also found that they would transport meat in smaller vehicles and ambulances in the night. They were beaten to death on suspicion of being child lifters.”

None of the Shobhapur witnesses quoted in the report mentioned a “cow” in their statements. The Potka police station incharge did not make any claims of an illegal slaughterhouse either—although he did contradict himself by first stating that most of the traders at the Haldipokhar cattle market were Muslims, before giving the exact figures that indicate that 60 percent of them were Hindus.

The committee focused on one argument in support of its conclusion that the four deceased Muslims were cattle thieves—a 2015 case against Halim, registered at the Kowali police station in East Singhbhum. In reference to the case, the committee noted that local residents had told them, “Cattle trafficking ka mamla tha”—It was a matter related to cattle trafficking. In July this year, I spoke to Halim’s brother, Sheikh Salim, about the case. “It was the festival of Bakr-Id and Halim was ferrying some cattle to the market,” he recalled. “But in the Hindus’ areas, they got into a scuffle with the driver of another vehicle, who was coming from other side and was not giving him a way to pass. But somebody called the police and they arrested my brother for ferrying cattle illegally.”

Salim did not deny that his brother was a cattle trader, but told me that Halim was not involved in any illegal trade or trafficking. He also told the committee that the cattle thieves came from Odisha and that his brother was wrongfully accused. Further, even though the 2015 case only accused Halim, the committee declared all four of the deceased as cattle thieves in the report. It provided no explanation for this conclusion. The committee did not appear to make any efforts towards determining the current status of the case either. The case is still pending before a Jamshedpur district court and has not seen any significant progress. There was no substantive hearing on the last four occasions when it was listed before the court. It is next listed for hearing on 10 February 2020.

The committee’s investigation is marked by crucial omissions. For instance, Sher Mohammad, the Shobhapur sadr—an official from the village—had told the committee that “some of the people in the mob were carrying swords” when they attacked the four men. When I visited the village in June 2017, the local police had told me that they had not recovered any weapon from the accused individuals. But the committee members appeared to make no effort to question the local police about the existence or non-recovery of weapons. This, in turn, aided some of the accused to secure bail on the grounds that the police did not recover any incriminating material from the accused individuals.

Similarly, the committee appeared to ignore a substantial lead provided by Shobhapur’s residents about the mobilisation by the mob. Anta Tudu, the gram pradhan—or village head—had told the committee members that there were around fifty families in Shobhapur, but that the mob comprised between five hundred to a thousand people, who had surrounded the village from all directions that day. It seems improbable that a village with just 50 families could have spontaneously created a mob of that scale. Moreover, Mohammad, Tudu and the local police told the committee that the mob was strategically mobilised in groups around the village to stop any police reinforcements from entering the village. Still, the committee did not make any references to the possibility of criminal conspiracy behind the lynchings in its report.

Yet another crucial omission of the committee’s investigation is the apparent failure of its members to speak to any of the suspected perpetrators or their families. The members appeared to have only spoken to the families of the deceased. The family’s statements, as recorded in the report, indicated no questions that inquire about the identities of the perpetrators, or that seek evidence of the crime. Instead, the committee appeared to pursue an entirely different mandate—determining whether the deceased men or any of their family members were engaged in the practice of cow slaughter, where the slaughter of cattle took place in the village, and whether any of them consumed beef.

This line of questioning is evident from the report’s record of the witness statements. At abrupt and seemingly random points in their statements, the witnesses appear to discuss beef consumption or cow slaughter. For instance, the last sentence in Hui’s statement noted: “We eat meat but to buy it we go to Haldipokhar.” In the immediately preceding sentences, he informed the committee that his house was also vandalised and identified the locations where the four men were lynched. Similarly, Sher Mohammad, after describing the circumstances leading up to the incident, and how the mob had attacked the police and were carrying swords, is abruptly recorded having said, “There are smaller traders of ox in Shobhapur.” Tudu told the committee, “Cow is sometimes slaughtered in the village. A person named Bideo slaughters it. I don’t know his full name. He sells meat from home.” There was no such attempt to look into cattle slaughter in Nagadih, or the dietary habits of the Hindu victims or their families.

The committee, the local police and the district administration’s biased approach was also evident in their portrayal of the protests that followed the two incidents. On 19 May 2017, Muslim groups and Hindu residents of Jamshedpur and its surroundings organised separate protests against the lynchings. The Muslims were protesting against the four killings, in four areas in and around Jamshedpur—Ghatkidih, Bishtupur, Mango and Azad Nagar area—while the Hindu residents protested in the city’s Jugsalai area.

In Jugsalai, the supporters of the Hindu families had attacked Adivasi workers of the Tata Steel companies in Jamshedpur. The report on the Shobhapur lynchings by the East Singhbhum district administration stated, “The lynching incident was used by anti-social elements to divide the society into Adivasis and non-Adivasis.” It also noted that the supporters of the three victims’ families beat up daily-wage labourers from the Adivasi community. The police booked the attackers under offences pertaining to deterring public officers from carrying out their duty, endangering life, attempt to murder, and unlawful assembly—all under the Indian Penal Code. There were no charges under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The protesters from the Muslim community received a different treatment. Among several other charges, the police also booked them under offences pertaining to promoting communal enmity and causing destruction with intent to insult religious sentiments. The implication is evident—the Muslim protestors were seen not just as members of unlawful assembly causing rioting or deterring public official from maintaining order, but as communal elements causing religious enmity. Moreover, apart from the offences under the Indian Penal Code, the Muslim protesters were also booked under Section 3 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.

However, the committee’s bias towards the protests was the most evident. It dedicated a significant portion of its report to its investigation of the protests by Muslim residents. It had arrived at a thoroughly unsubstantiated assertion—that a small, local organisation named the Muslim Ekta Manch, which the committee said had orchestrated the anti-lynching protests, could become an entity similar to the extremist militant group Indian Mujahideen. The committee also characterised the members of the Manch as “criminals” who were involved in the grabbing of forest and government land.

The report concluded that the Muslim Ekta Manch had planned the protests ahead of the lynchings, with an intention to cause riots and communal enmity. It identified more than two dozen suspected members of the Manch, revealed their home addresses, and listed the dates and places where the organisation had supposedly held meetings in May 2017. It claimed the lynchings were only used as a “trigger” by the Muslim organisation.

The committee named six individuals—namely, Aftab Ahmad Siddiqui, Firoz Khan, Babar Khan, Jaki Azmal Sonu, Nurul Haq and Yusuf Patel—as the founder members of the Muslim Ekta Manch. According to the committee’s own findings, the Manch had held one of its 11 meetings at the office of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, a state political party. Siddiqui was formerly a BJP leader and the president of its district minority cell in East Singhbhum. In May 2019, after the general elections, Siddiqui resigned from his post as the minority-cell president owning responsibility for the party’s poor performance in the Muslim-majority constituencies of the East Singhbhum district. Soon after, he left the BJP to join the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen.

The committee’s description of the Muslim Ekta Manch did not match the media reports about it or the videos of the organisation, all of which are available in the public domain. Media reports portray the Manch as an organisation that was formed to promote religious harmony. In June 2017, Hindustan, the Hindi sister-publication of the Hindustan Times, reported: “The Manch was formed by Muslim leaders of several political parties and social organisations after the Pokharia incident.” [In April 2017, Hindu outfits had burnt the houses of some Muslim families and destroyed their religious spaces in the Pokharia village, which is situated on the border between Jharkhand and West Bengal.] The Hindustan report added, “Before this, it didn’t exist. The Manch took up the issue of Shobhapur and Nagadih lynching.”

In May 2017, the Urdu daily Siasat published a report about a rally organised by the Manch in Gandhi Maidan, in Jamshedpur, on 7 May. The report noted more than 60,000 people had attended the rally and discussed attacks on Muslims across the country, in a peaceful manner. It said the crowd was also carrying the national flag in their hands. A video of the rally posted on YouTube showed the crowd standing and singing the song “Saare jahaan se achchha,” holding the Indian flag in their hands.

The Manch no longer exists. In June 2017, after the committee’s recommendation, the organisation was dissolved by its founders. I was also unable to speak to any of its founders because they were arrested for their role in the protests against the lynchings soon after the dissolution of the organisation. More than two dozen members of the Manch are still facing trial and their bail applications have been rejected several times. Salim told me he knew one of the men arrested for the protests, and that man was released on bail as recently as June 2019. “Those who lynched the men spent less time in jail than those who protested against it,” he said.