06 March,2013 07:17 AM IST | | Shiva Devnath
The Malwani police officers have booked nine people including the owner of a cloth-dyeing company for allegedly lynching a 35-year-old robber in the wee hours of Tuesday. The locals, however, claim that they had handed over the robber to the Malwani police officers who beat him up.
According to the Malwani police, the robber, identified as Javed Hyder Ali, had tried to enter the premises of a dye manufacturing company owned by Amarjeet Singh and his brother Vijay. The police said Vijay and three of his employees used to sleep in the factory. At 1 am on Tuesday, Vijay saw someone trying to break into the factory premises.
"Vijay has been sleeping in the factory since there have been robberies in the factory," said a police officer from the Malwani police station. Vijay, who was asleep near the boundary wall, got up and nabbed the trespasser. When he figured out that the intruder was a robber, he began beating him. His associates joined in and, after thrashing him, dragged the accused who was bleeding by now to the police station.
The police officers said they arrested Ali and locked him up. At 9 am on Tuesday when officers entered the lock-up they saw Ali sleeping. They tried to wake him up to take him to the hospital for a medical exam but he did not budge. The officers then rushed Ali to Bhagwati hospital where he was declared dead.
The police officers have now booked Vijay, Amarjeet and five others for murder. But Vijay and his employees pointed out that they had handed over the robber to the police at 1 am and he was declared dead at 9 am the next day.
Harinder Singh, one of the employees at the factory, said that when the factory workers turned Ali in at the police station, they saw police officers beating Ali inside the station. Mahesh Patil, deputy commissioner of police (zone XI), said, "Vijay and the others have been booked for lynching the robber. We are conducting enquiries to find out whether Ali was beaten up by the police. If we find that the officers had assaulted Ali, we will take action against them."
Mob rule
Feb 22, 2012: Three robbers moving around at Jamrushi Nagar in Kandivli looking for possible targets were arrested by the Kandivli police. A mob of around 200 people had gathered at the spot and demanded that the robbers be handed over to them for âinstant justice'. When the cops refused, the mob started pelting stones, injuring a constable who had to be admitted to hospital.
Oct 15, 2011: Dongri police arrested five men for allegedly lynching an 18-year-old boy after mistaking him to be a cell phone thief. The accused had beaten up Sukhi Rehman Shaikh and tied him up in the kitchen of their workplace, Huma caterers, for more than four hours on October 14.
Oct 10, 2010: A chain snatcher would have lost his life in a lynching incident if the orderly of ACP (Mahim division) had not intervened and stopped the violent crowd. Faizan Qureshi alas Petaly (25) had robbed a chain from a 59-year-old woman when the crowd nabbed him and started pounding him.
May 15, 2010: Passers-by lynched a chain snatcher and injured his accomplice after they attempted to snatch a woman's gold chain at Arnala in Virar. Bhanumati Bhoir (45) and her relative were returning from a marriage when Salman Patel (24) and Vir Singh (25) raced close to them on a motorcycle and grabbed the chain.