Karnataka Lynching Victim’s Family Refuses To Believe Child-Lifting Rumour Was The Reason For Attack

Updated on: 16 July 2018 1:11 pm

The family of a Hyderabad techie who was lynched in Karnataka’s Bidar last week has demanded a “proper investigation” into the crime, refusing to believe that suspicion of him being a child-lifter led to the killing of 32-year-old Mohammad Azam.

“How can anybody suspect him to be a kidnapper of children? Definitely it would not have been the reason,” said Mohammad Akram, brother of Azam, as quoted by The Hindustan Times.

According to reports, Azam was attacked on Friday after his friend Mohammed Salham-eid-al-Kubaisi, a Qatari national, offered chocolates to some schoolchildren. Kubaisi and another victim, Mohammed Salman, were injured in an ensuing mob attack. They have been shifted to a Hyderabad hopsital. Another injured person, Noor Mohammed, is undergoing treatment at Bidar.

Akram refuses to believe that his brother was attacked under the suspicion of being a child-lifter. “He (Azam) was a software engineer working with Google,” he said. “He looked so sophisticated and polished in his behavior.”

Another newspaper quoted a family member as saying, “This is jungle raj. Animals are better than human beings as they attack other animals only when they are hungry.”

According to a report by ZeeNews, 30 people have been arrested in connection with the lynching. It includes the administrator of a WhatsApp group that spread rumours about child-lifting and another person who shot and circulated pictures of the attack.

A recent Outlook cover story had found that fake news and social media rumours goad people into violent acts in various parts of the country in recent times. Across the country, such false alerts have killed several people of late, what with unidentified people or groups using social media platforms to spread baseless reports.

Bidar, which is a hilltop city in northeastern Karnataka, borders Telangana and Maharashtra. A PTI report said the Maharashtra police, concerned over a string of lynching incidents in their state as well, are launching a campaign to check the spread of rumours on social media and come up with new ways to deal with the menace. The move comes in the wake of five people getting lynched in upstate Dhule district’s tribal village last month over child-lifting rumours being spread on social media.