THE THANE police, which suspended two constables for allegedly not intervening when a man was tied upside down to a tree and beaten to death by people in Dombivli on October 26, are struggling to find witnesses in the case. A minute-long video clip that captured the incident where the man, still unidentified, was beaten up by villagers in Khoni village led to the arrests of three persons and suspension of two police constables of Manpada police station. Senior Inspector, Manpada police station, Gajanan Kabdule, said: “While we have arrested three villagers, we have information that more people were involved in beating up the man. But the local villagers are tight-lipped about the number of people involved in the attack.” An officer said they were yet to procure the video clip. “We have, however, seen the clip but the people cannot be seen clearly in it,” he said. An officer said the victim had boarded a truck and when the vehicle halted at Laxmi Kiranna stores in Khoni village, Dombivali East, to deliver goods, the man allegedly started arguing with the truck driver and he also had an argument with a shop owner. He was allegedly behaving aggressively and hence, the locals tied him up and started thrashing him. An officer claimed that when the two constables, S V Kachave and H N Garud, tried to intervene, the man tried to attack them as well. Following an inquiry, the two constables were suspended for failing to act when the local had tied up the man and were beating him up. The man was rushed to a local hospital where he was declared dead due to the internal injuries he sustained.
