Md Vora lynching case: 9 remanded to police custody

Vadodara, May 26 (UNI) A city court today remanded nine youths, including three bank executives, accused in the brutal killing of Mohammad Rafiq Vora during the recent communal violence in the city to police custody till May 29.

The nine accused, who were absconding ever since the murder of 30-year-old Vora on May 2 night on the Ajwa Road, surrendered yesterday before the Prevention of Crime Branch (PCB) police, which took them into custody.

Police who have registered a case of rioting and murder against a 1500-strong mob, including 14 people named in the case by the deceased's brother Haji Vora, had earlier arrested one Nilkanth Garagewala, who had been sent to jail custody. Four more accused in the case are still absconding.

Vora, who was reportedly returning to his Ajwa Road residence from the Gujarat Refinery on the fateful night, was brutally stabbed and burnt alive in his car by an irate mob which was on a rameage at the Mahavir Chowk on the Ajwa road under the sensitive Panigate police station despite imposition of curfew in the area.

The communal violence which spread to the walled city areas following demolition of a 100-year-old dargah by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) at Fatehpura on May 1, had claimed six lives and left over 60 people injured.

PCB sources said the preliminary interrogation of the nine had not yet yielded much result as all of them continued to claim to be innocent and alleged that they had been ''wrongly implicated'' in the murder case.

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