It was a mob of about 2,000 who watched the lynching of the five Dalits 10 days ago but not a single witness turned up on Day One of the ‘‘high-level’’ inquiry commission appointed by Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala. Commissioner (Rohtak Division) R R Banswal is the one-man commission and after putting an ad in newspapers asking eyewitnesses to depose, spreading the word through local Revenue Officers, he spent three hours this morning doing little other than waiting. An hour at the Dulena police post, where the lynching happened, two hours in a room at Jhajjar’s PWD Guest House. For all the outrage over the deaths—even the Prime Minister today publicly upbraided Chautala—the man in charge of the inquiry admits that there is little he can do other than go through the motions. ‘‘It’s shameful that no one has turned up. Now that they did not come, the next step will be to issue notices to specific people associated with the case like the families of those killed and the owner of the cow,’’ Banswal told The Indian Express. When asked why he wasn’t visiting the victims’ villages, questioning the police personnel who were among the eyewitnesses, he said: ‘‘This is a commission for an inquiry, not for a criminal investigation. We have to issue notices to them.’’ Banswal has one month to do his job which is, as he admits, not to get the guilty arrested but to focus on administrative lapses. ‘‘It is up to the police to do the criminal investigation.’’ Which they claim to have started. Resham Singh, IGP, Rohtak, says that he has drawn up a list of 28 names of those who were present in the mob. Singh said that the mob was instigated by this group of people, largely on mobile phones, spreading the rumour that a cow had been killed. Most of the 28 are local residents and don’t have any criminal background, he said. ‘‘We are not arresting them right now because we want to use them to get to the others. We have collected evidence and are going to register cases against different people under different sections,’’ Singh said.
