Jharkhand lynching: Police drop murder charges against 11 accused in charge sheet

Ranchi, Sep 10: The Jharkhand Police have dropped the murder charges against the 11 people accused in a fatal mob attack on a 24-year-old in Kharsawan district in June.

This comes two months after the 24-year-old Tabrez Ansari was brutally assaulted on the accusation of theft in Jharkhand's.

The police said one reason they had not filed charges under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code was that the postmortem examination report blamed cardiac arrest for the death of 24-year-old Tabrez Ansari, The Indian Express reported.

The 11 accused were instead charged under Section 304 of the IPC, which deals with culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

Ansari was thrashed for hours and forced to chant "Jai Shri Ram" on June 18 on suspicion of stealing a motorcycle with two other young men in Jharkhand's Seraikela Kharsawan. He died from his injuries four days later on June 22 in a hospital. The incident was filmed by witnesses.

The incident also found mention in the Rajya Sabha, when senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said Jharkhand had become a "lynching factory".

"Dalits and Muslims are being killed there every week. Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi, we are with you in the fight of 'sabka saath sabka vikas', but it should be there for people to see it. We cannot see it anywhere," he said.