UP lynching: For over a month now, districts in Uttar Pradesh have been in the grip of rumours of “drone chori” – that drones were allegedly being used to carry out robberies. It was into the whorl of one such panic-fuelled night that Hariom Valmiki walked into late on October 1. At Dandepur Jamunapur village in Rae Bareli, Hariom, who, police said, was of unsound mind, was allegedly mistaken for a drone thief. The 38-year-old was apparently on his way to Amiliya ka Purva village, 8 km away, where his estranged wife and daughter lived with his father-in-law. Over the next few hours, Hariom was slapped, kicked, stripped, beaten with belts and canes and taken from one place to another in Dandepur Jamunapur as the mob of about a hundred asked him to lead them to his alleged accomplice. Videos of the attack show the mob assaulting him while repeatedly asking, “Saathi kahan hai (where is your accomplice)?”. He was eventually left to die near the railway tracks across the road from the village. Police have so far arrested nine people in the lynching case. “Raids are being conducted in other districts and states to look for 10-15 others involved in the incident,” said Rae Bareli Superintendent of Police Yashveer Singh, while saying that there is no caste angle and that Hariom, a Dalit, was killed by a mob that had mistaken him for a thief. The incident had taken a political turn, with the Congress targeting the BJP government over the incident, calling it a failure of law and order. Leader of Opposition and Raebareli MP Rahul Gandhi spoke to the family of the victim, Hariom, over the phone. Another video, purportedly shot a day before he was killed, shows Hariom being questioned by the roadside by a Police Response Vehicle of the state police, around 30 km from Dandepur Jamunapur village. Sources said they found nothing on him and let him go his way. Hariom seemed to have walked on until he reached Dandepur Jamunapur, where he was attacked. 'He was mostly harmless' Dandepur Jamunapur had been particularly tense over the last few days, with villagers citing at least three incidents of alleged thefts by drones in the three days leading up to the incident. Police, however, said these were just rumours and that no robbery FIRs have been filed so far. At Amiliya ka Purva, Hariom’s wife Pinki, who works as a safai karamchari at a local bank and lives with her father and 12-year-old daughter, says her husband's mental illness had forced her to live separately from him. But he would visit her at infrequent intervals. “He would come here, eat whatever we gave him and go back. He hardly spoke, not even to our daughter. He was mostly harmless,” she says, breaking down and seeking justice for him. Sitting beside her, 12-year-old Annanya, who has seen videos of her father being beaten up, says, “Police stopped him the previous day. They should have brought him home instead of leaving him on the road. I would do that if I were them,” she says. At the home of Anuj Maurya, 25, who is among those from Dandepur Jamunapur who have been arrested, his mother Suryawati Devi admits that it was to their doorstep that Hariom was dragged and first beaten up on the night of October 1. “Since that afternoon, we had been hearing cries of chor, chor (thief, thief). So when this man (Hariom) was seen walking around in a suspicious manner, people chased him and brought him to our doorstep and interrogated him here. They said he was trying to steal a cow. My son did nothing – he was simply standing and watching. Then, the crowd – some of them from other villages – took him elsewhere. In the morning, we got to know that he had died,” she says. Hariom's body was found about 2 km away, near the Ishwardaspur railway halt that's under construction. Besides Anuj and another villager, Vaibhav Singh, three youths from neighbouring Baharpur village – Suresh Maurya, Vijay Maurya and Sehdev Pasi – have been arrested. All of them work as labourers, living in kutcha houses. At the house of Suresh Maurya in Baharpur village, a bedsheet hangs in place of the door. His wife had left the village. Suresh’s sister-in-law Rekha, who lives in a hut nearby, says, “Men from our village are being framed. Those from Dandepur Jamunapur purposely brought the thief to our village and dumped the body here to frame our men. We are poor people and there is no one here to talk on our behalf.” At Shimaur, a village in Fatehpur district that's about 70 km from where Hariom was attacked, Kusum, a nursing student and the youngest of Hariom's three siblings, says, "Why didn't police take him to a safe place when they saw him the previous day? He was going to meet his wife and daughter. How can a man be killed over rumours?” 'Drone chori' rumours continue Hariom's death hasn't quelled rumours of thefts by drones. “We are still seeing drones. All of us have been staying up at night. For the last one month, we have been hearing cries of chor-chor,” says Geeta from Dandepur Jamunapur. Police said the rumours started from the western UP districts of Bareilly and Meerut, where it was contained following special awareness drives and crackdowns. But the rumours soon spread to central and eastern Uttar Pradesh, especially to Lucknow, Rae Bareli and Sultanpur. Drones are a common sight in rural parts of the state, used in everything from wedding photography to reel-making. In Rae Bareli alone, police have confiscated about 100 drones since the lynching and police stations have been asked to maintain “drone registers” with details of drone owners.
