Malappuram. A dalit migrant worker from Bihar was brutally lynched to death in the Kondotty region of the Malappuram district of Kerala on May 13; as per the media reports, the cold-blooded murder of the dalit youth, later identified as Rakesh Manjhi (36) was perpetrated by some locals who tied and tortured him before killing him in cold blood.
The fateful incident is said to be of May 13 night when a few locals, later identified as Fazil Shafudhin, Muhammad Afzal, Mehboob Ahmad Samad, Habib, and their associates, allegedly on suspicion of theft, tied down Rakesh and thrashed him brutally; it’s been learnt that the victim has been mercilessly tortured for at least two hours before he met a painful death by assault.
It’s been learnt that plastic pipes and sticks brutally thrashed the youth for at least two hours, and when his body became unresponsive, the assailants carried his body to a local junction, following which a few locals informed the police. Learning about the incident, a police team, after reaching the spot, immediately rushed Rajesh to the nearby healthcare in Kozhikode, where he succumbed to his injuries.
It’s been reported that the victim, Rajesh, was previously working in the Pattambi area, and it was only a couple of days before that he had arrived in Kondotty. The deceased is said to have arrived in Kizhisseri to work in a chicken shop; he was reported to be a resident of Madhepura in Bihar.
The Kerala police, on the other hand, have so far arrested as many as eight persons pertaining to the barbaric act and confirmed that the murder of the tribal youth was a case of mob lynching; the police confirmed that the perpetrators had also tried to tamper the evidence including the CCTV footage though the police team has recovered photographs from accused phones and CCTV footage of the spot is being recovered.
It’s been learnt that the assailants initially tried to float up a fake story and claimed that the victim fell from a building’s terrace and sustained serious injuries. However, the post-mortem of the deceased confirmed bruise marks on his body and broken bones, suggesting torture.
It is to be noted that law and order in Malappuram districts on many occasions have drawn national attention in the past; the Muslim majority district of Kerala is also considered the hub of the sleeper cells of radical outfits like Popular Front of India (PFI) and ISIS.
It is worth mentioning here that this is not the first time that the southern state has witnessed a barbaric act of mob lynching, as several cases of lynching have come to the fore from the left-ruled state in the last few years. Earlier in a similar incident, a tribal youth identified as Madhu, a resident of Attapadi, was also lynched to death by as many as 16 people in Mukkali near Mannarkkad of Palakkad district in February 2018.
