After 45-year-old’s lynching in Bihar, family struggles for answers, hopes for govt help

Wife Shabnam Parveen last saw Hussain on November 28, when he left home, in Gagan Diwan village of Bihar Sharif district, headed 45 km away to Nawada. The family lived in Nawada’s Barui till recently, and Hussain felt comfortable in those areas, finding eager customers in the remote villages around.

Brother Mohammad Chand Hussain says they got to know what had happened only when someone shared a video on December 6 morning of a severely injured man. An alarmed Chand thought he looked like Hussain, and showed the video to Parveen. Immediately, he says, he and another brother, Mohammad Shakib Alam, left for Nawada. Other members of the family followed shortly after.

“He was admitted to Nawada Sadar Hospital, and barely recognisable,” Alam says.

They pieced together what had happened speaking to Hussain. He said he had just finished his daily rounds and was near Bhattapur village in the evening when his bicycle suffered a puncture. Seeing a group of men sitting around a fire, Hussain approached them and enquired if there was a puncture repair shop nearby.

According to Chand, the men who were drunk asked him his name and what he did, and then, out of the blue, started frisking him. “One of them took all the money he was carrying… When he resisted, they started beating him.”

Hussain told the family he was beaten first with one of the logs in the fire, then dragged to a room, stripped naked, and his limbs tied. The assault allegedly continued, with a heated iron road inserted into his rectum, pliers used to cut his ears, his fingers crushed and his head fractured. The family claims he was also given electric shocks in his private parts.

“Every time he lost consciousness, they sprinkled water to wake him up and continued the beating. When they thought he could take no more, they placed jewellery around his body to frame him as a thief,” Chand says, adding that if Hussain’s intention was that, he would have had other cases lodged against him in the years he had been working in the area.

In a video statement before his death, Hussain said he was beaten up by a mob of 20-25 men, including minors. “They began beating him around 7 pm and tortured him till 2 am,” Chand says.

Police records show they arrived around 2.30 am, and found Hussain in a critical condition. He was first taken to the Roh Primary Health Centre, and later referred to Nawada Sadar Hospital. He was at Nawada Sadar Hospital until December 11 night, when he was referred to Bhagwan Mahavir Institute of Medical Sciences, Pawapuri.

Police did not share the postmortem findings with The Indian Express, and the family says they have not got the report either.

An FIR was lodged at the Roh Police Station against 25 people, 10-15 of them unidentified. Police have arrested nine people, under charges of unlawful assembly and rioting, causing grievous hurt by use of dangerous means, and abetment and common intention, with murder charges added after Hussain succumbed to his injuries. Two minor accused have been detained.

The nine arrested are Shri Yadav, Ranjan Kumar Yadav, Kedar Yadav, Garib Yadav, Yadu Yadav, Chandan Yadav, Piyush Kumar Yadav, Sikandar Kumar Yadav and Vipul Kumar Yadav, all residents of Bhatta village.

Asked about the case, police said the investigation is ongoing, including into the motive and circumstances.

RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari said the incident was evidence that “mob lynching incidents have gone up in recent years… Hate is being spread”.

About all the accused being Yadavs, Tiwari said: “Let law take its own course, without any discrimination.”

On Wednesday, Bihar Minority Welfare Minister and JD(U) leader Mohammad Zama Khan visited Hussain’s family, and assured justice. “The minister gave us Rs 20,000 and promised Rs 3 lakh more (from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund),” says Shabnam.

Khan told The Indian Express: “The Nitish Kumar government is very sensitive towards such incidents… Several arrests have been made. We are keeping an eye to ensure communal harmony in and around the area.”

On Thursday, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind president Arshad Madani announced that it would set up a legal panel of experienced criminal lawyers to ensure justice for Hussain.

Shabnam worries the money offered by Khan is just a drop in the coming flood of payments, including EMIs for household items and a bank loan of Rs 60,000. Hussain would regularly take Rs 10,000-Rs 20,000 loans from local lenders for his cloth stock too. Only recently had Hussain, who earned about Rs 15,000 to 20,000 a month, felt confident enough to stretch his expenses. He put money into building the two-room house in Bihar Sharif to replace the mud-and-tile one they lived in. A year later, while some portions are still to be plastered and a room lacks a permanent roof, the fresh paint is telling.

Over the past six months, Hussain and Shabnam furnished the house with a bed, a TV seat, a clock and an almirah, costing Rs 1 lakh in all, to be paid as EMIs.

Shabnam says Hussain had been working extra to pay off the money. Chand talks about how he lived a quiet life, with a small circle of friends and “no bad habits”. The only mobile phone in the family was usually at home, with their three children – two sons and a daughter. Hussain’s younger son, 12, chips in to say his father carried a diary to take down phone numbers; he didn’t know how to feed them into the device.

This was why the family had no contact with Hussain after he left home on November 28, till the video reached Chand on December 6.

Chand says they want the harshest punishment for the accused, and support for the family. “Nothing will bring my brother back, but without long-term support, his family will be forced onto the streets.”

They are hoping the government will give a job to Hussain’s elder son Mohammad Rakib Hussain, 18, who completed his matriculation this year and is learning electrical work.

As their daughter, 14, sits beside her, Shabnam talks of Hussain’s dreams – “to complete the house’s construction so that he could start saving for our daughter’s marriage”, and to give his children a good education. “He was illiterate but he wanted them to have this.”

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