The alleged murder of 50-year-old Mohammad Athar Hussain in Nawada is the third reported incident of mob lynching in the southern Bihar district this year.
Hussain, a garment seller who hailed from Gagan Diwan village in Laheri police station area of Bihar Sharif in Nalanda, was brutally assaulted by a mob on December 5 in what is being described as a communal hate crime. He succumbed to his injuries on December 12. The previous incidents — reported in February and August — were not communal in nature.
Once a sub-division of Gaya, Nawada became a district in 1973. It has five constituencies: Rajauli, Hisua, Nawada, Govindpur, and Warsaliganj. With a religious demography of 88.53% of Hindus and 11% Muslims, Nawada houses over 2.5 lakh people belonging to religious minorities.
Hussain lived with his in-laws in Nawada and sold clothes moving around on a bicycle. On December 5, while returning home in the evening, he was stopped by a group of men in Bhattapar village in Noh block after he had asked them for directions to a repair shop to mend his punctured tyre. According to a family member Alt News spoke to, there were four to five men. They asked him his name and, upon learning that he was Muslim, robbed him of Rs 16,000 to Rs 18,000 before attacking him.
In a video Hussain recorded before his death, he recounted the horrifying torture he had been subjected to. “I had gone to Dumri to sell clothes and got a little late in returning home. It was around 8 pm. The harassment started just before Bhatta,” he stated in the video. After robbing him of his money, the clothes he was carrying and the bicycle, the mob took him to a room and locked him inside. “They opened my pants to check if I was a miyaji. They poured petrol on me and beat me. After that, one boy cut my ear with pliers… Someone was beating me with a stick, someone with a rod, someone was cutting my ear with pliers, breaking my fingers, burning my flesh. They climbed onto my chest until blood came out of my mouth… They broke my hand,” he recounted.
Eventually, someone Hussain later described as an ‘angel’ came to his rescue and called the emergency number 112. Police reached the spot around 2.30 am and took Hussain to the Roh Primary Health Centre.
From there, he was referred to Nawada Sadar Hospital and finally to Vardhman Institute of Medical Sciences, Pawapuri, where he breathed his last on December 12. Hussain is survived by his wife and three minor children, two daughters and a son.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.
