‘They thrashed me with lathis’: Key witness Samiuddin recounts Hapur terror

NEW DELHI: 65-year-old Samiuddin, the survived Hapur lynching recounts the terror seeking an unbiased investigation in the case.

Narrating the sequence of events, the elderly man with broken, plastered legs at a conference room in Delhi on Saturday said, “They thrashed me with lathis and wooden planks and chased me for a kilometre until I collapsed near a temple, where more people joined the mob, leaving me half dead,” according to reports published in Scroll.in.

On the day of the incident, “I was in my field smoking a bidi with my neighbour, Hasan,” Samiuddin said. “We were there to fetch fodder for our cattle. It was around 11.30 am when we spotted a group of 10-15 men assaulting Qasim, whom we had seen a few minutes before walking towards the fields. There was no cow, no motorbike or any vehicle there.”

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In a letter sent to senior police officials of Uttar Pradesh, Samiuddin narrated the event as the prime witness and demanding fair investigation. However, his statement is yet to be recorded by the police, he said.

On June 18, a mob assault him and a cattle trader, Qasim, 45, in Madapur village of Uttar Pradesh’s Hapuraccusing them of cow slaughter. The aggressive mob brutally lynched Qasim while Samiuddin was grievously injured.

Samiuddin, the sole bread winner of a family that includes aged mother, wife, five daughters and two sons.