Dadri lynching case: Fresh twist over age of accused

The Dadri lynching case got a fresh twist on Thursday when it was revealed that one of the accused, Sachin, had forged documents to establish that he was a juvenile and got bail on the same ground.

This revelation was made by Akhlaq’s daughter Shaista in a petition given to the Gautam Buddha Nagar SSP.

According to her petition, accused Sachin had presented bogus documents according to which he had two different dates of birth on his TC (transfer certificate) and marksheet.

Shaista said that Sachin was her classmate at Rana Sangram Singh Inter College in Bisada village in 2009. While she cleared her high school the same year, Sachin failed and cleared it four years later in 2013.

He took the examination at Dayanand Inter College in the neighbouring village of Bambawad.

In the high school form, his date of birth is September 6, 1998, while the date of birth in his TC for admission to the Dayanand Inter College is September 6, 1994.

Shaista has claimed that as per the TC, he was an adult when he along with others had lynched her father, Mohammad Akhlaq, on the intervening night of September 28-29, 2015.

According to the counsel for Akhlaq’s family, Asad Hayat, Sachin’s date of birth in his voter election card is also 22 years which will become 25 years in the revised voter list next year.

It may be recalled that last year, Akhlaq had been lynched by a mob in Bisada village on the suspicion that he had stored beef in his fridge. His 20-year-old son Danish was brutally injured and is still recovering. Interestingly, many of the 17 accused arrested are already out on bail.

On July 14 this year, the Gautam Buddha Nagar judicial magistrate Vijay Kumar had ordered investigation and lodging of an FIR of cow slaughter against family members of Mohammad Akhlaq.

The demand had been raised following the claim of H.C. Singh, joint director of Mathura-based Forensic Investigation Laboratory of UP University of Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry, that the sample sent to the lab after the lynching incident last year was of “cow or its progeny.”