Assam Police file chargesheet against 48 in lynching case
Guwahati, Sep 1 : Nearly three months after two youths were lynched by a mob, Assam Police on Saturday filed a chargesheet against 48 persons allegedly involved in the killing of the youths on June 8 this year.
Assam Director General of Police Kuladhar Saikia while addressing a press conference in Guwahati said over 70 witnesses were examined during the investigation. The DGP said the police will seek fast-track trial in the case.
"The chargesheet submitted in the Chief Judicial Magistrate court of Diphu in Central Assam's Karbi Anglong district included 48 accused. Besides the 46-page chargesheet, over 800 pages of supplementary documents, including forensic reports, have also been submitted," Saikia said.
The accused were charged under various sections the IPC, he added.
"The chargesheet is filed within a short span of 90 days, which is a big step," he said, addng the police had formed a Special Investigating Team (SIT) to probe the lynching.
The two youths, Nilotpal Das and Abhijit Nath, who had gone to the Kathilangso waterfalls in Dokmoka area of the Karbi Anglong district on June 8, were lynched by a mob suspecting them to be child snatchers.
Police had earlier stated that the main accused Alphajoz Timung, after an altercation with the two, spread a mobile message to some locals saying that two child lifters were escaping the area with a child on a vehicle.
Some of the locals intercepted the vehicle and lynched the two despite their repeated appeals that they were not child snatchers.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
