The boy, who is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Varanasi, said, “I was walking on Dudhari Bridge when four men kidnapped me,” the boy said initially. “Two of them tied my hand and third one started pouring kerosene. After which they set me on fire and ran away.” He later said that he was being forced to chant Jai Shri Ram, Scroll.in reported.
However, the police denied that the boy was forced to chant the religious slogan. Chandauli SP Santosh Kumar Singh said the boy gave different statements to different people.
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“He’s admitted in a hospital with 45 per cent burns,” Singh said. “He had given different statements to different people, so it seemed suspicious. It seemed he had been tutored. Police monitored CCTV footage of places he had mentioned and found that he had not been at any of those places."
The police officer also claimed that witnesses saw the boy set himself on fire.
Meanwhile, India Today reported that the minor earlier said that he went for a run to Maharajpur village where he met four men who dragged him to a field and set him on fire. The minor claimed that the men also forced him to chant Jai Shri Ram and when he didn't do it, they beat him and set him on fire.
The SP Santosh said, "The victim was referred to BHU where he changed his statement and told the inspector that four men on a motorcycle kidnapped him and took him to Hateeja village."
According to the police, Maharajpur and Hateeja are located in two different directions.
There have been a series of lynching incidents across India, where victims were attacked for allegedly not chanting Jai Shri Ram. In the most recent incident, two men in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad city were allegedly threatened and forced to chant Jai Shri Ram by unidentified people on July 21.
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On June 18, another Muslim man was beaten up in Jharkhand’s Seraikela Kharsawan district for allegedly attempting to steal a motorcycle. The FIR said that the mob had also forced Ansari to chant Jai Shri Ram and Jai Hanuman. He died four days later.
Last week, a group of intellectuals wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to intervene to stop the mob lynching trend. The letter said that the slogan Jai Shri Ram had become a “provocative war cry” and the reason behind many lynching incidents in the country.