AGRA: At least four members of All India Hindu Mahasabha have been arrested in Agra in a cow slaughter case.
The four Hindu Mahasabha members allegedly slaughtered a cow and falsely implicated at least four Muslims in the case.
The four arrested Hindutva group members have been identified as: Sanjay Jat, Jitendra Kushwaha, Brajesh Bhadoria and Saurabh Sharma.
The four arrested persons had allegedly hatched the conspiracy to settle a rivalry, the police said.
The arrested persons have been booked under Section 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle), 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Further, the accused have also been booked under sections of the Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act.
It may be mentioned here that on March 30, one of the arrested persons – Jitendra Kushwaha had filed an FIR against four Muslims – Mohammad Rizwan and his three sons Nakeem, Vijju, and Shanu – for slaughtering a cow.
However, police investigation later revealed that the four Muslim men had no involvement in the slaughter of the cow.
“Jitendra was found to have lied during the interrogation,” Agra police said.
“Sanjay and a few others were near the spot of the cow slaughter, call records suggest, not those they named in the police complaint. Call records also show that the accused persons had not gone to that spot in over a month,” the police further said.
“The cow was slaughtered on the eve of Ram Navami to disturb social harmony. We had unconfirmed reports about such an incident but got conclusive evidence when they tried to implicate some innocent people,” a police officer told Indian newspaper The Telegraph.