Jamshedpur, May 20: East Singhbhum district administration has intensified investigation into the incident of lynching of three persons in Bagbera to find out the root cause that led to the mob frenzy in Nagadih village on May 18 last.
The administration is also looking for the culprits who carried out an organized attack on administration officials and the police in Dhatkidih and Mango on 20th May last.
Police arrested 20 persons in connection with the Dhatkidih and Mango incidents of attack on police. Hundreds of people protesting the lynching of four Muslim youths from Haldipokhar by a mob in Rajnagar had gone violent and attacked police at the two places.
The four youths were lynched in a similar fashion in Shobhapur village of Rajnagar in the adjoining district of Seraikela-Kharsawan on the same day when three youths were lynched in Bagbera.
In order to facilitate speedy probe, district police has set up Jamshedpur Police Technical Cell which will try to find out the sequence of incidents connection with the brutal lynching of three persons in the hands of a mob comprising hundreds of armed villagers. The cell will be headed by SP city Prashant Anand, informed SSP Anoop T Mathew while addressing media with the deputy commissioner of East Singhbhum Amit Kumar.
The SSP said the investigation so far had revealed that irresponsible and mischievous misuse of social media had led to the rumours about child-lifting in Nagadih village. The messages spread through Whatsapp by culprits led to the mindless and brutal killings, he said.
�The technical cell is trying to find out those responsible for spreading rumours regarding child lifters which subsequently led to the killings. Besides, police teams are also collecting evidence against those who participated in the killins,� said the SSP.
Speaking on the disturbance witnessed in Mango and Dhatkidih on 20th May last, the DC said he had submitted the primary report on the incidents of the day to the state government. He said adequate security arrangements had been made in the sensitive areas of the city after the outrage.
The SSP said the police had foiled a bid to create further communal disturbance in Mango by arresting one Nand Kumar Sharma alias Nandu from Adityapur for allegedly forwarding fake videos of explosion in Mango. Nandu had reportedly spread a message on Whatsapp that a major explosion had taken place in Mango. He was traced with the help of the technical cell, said the SSP.
The DC and the SSP said the administration had intensified search for the culprits of lynching incident at Bagbera. Search is also on to nab the people responsible for attacking police in the name of protest at Dhatkidih and Mango, they said.
The DC said that out of the 20 persons arrested today, 14 are from Mango and the remaining six are from Dhatkidih.
The SSP said he had suspended the Bagbera thana OC, Amish Hussain after conducting an enquiry into the lynching at Nagadih in Bagbera on Friday night, when three innocent youths were lynched in the presence of a team of Bagbera police station. Sub-inspector Dilip Yadav who was OC, Sundarnagar police station has been posted as the new OC of Bagbera police station. Altogether 155 people have been named in the FIR in the Mango incident.
Notably, the lynching of seven persons in Rajnagar and Bagbera was the result of a rumour of child-lifters’ gang active in the reason that got increasingly stronger after two persons were lynched at separate places in Jadugora in East Singhbhum district on May 11. The rumour of child-lifters had spread to adjoining localities with the administration there doing little to do something as preventive measure.
Meanwhile, the Seraikela-Kharsawan police have not made any fresh arrest today after the arrest of two persons on Sunday. Jamshedpur police here have picked up one more suspect in custody in connection with lynching at Nagadih.
Of these 2,000, about 100 people were directly involved in the lynching, where as the rest of them were indulged in stone-pelting at the police and obstructing the police from carrying out their duty.
“Most of those involved in the lynching at Nagadih have gone underground as police started an intense search operation for the suspects,” said a police official.