Nikita Jain and Ghazala Ahmad
Akeel Qureshi struggles to speak. His voice is faint, hollow, as he sits on a hospital bed in a government facility in Aligarh. Swollen eyes and dried blood under his nails bear witness to the horror he and three other Muslim men endured on May 24.
Qureshi, 47, along with two others and a driver, had left Atrauli for a mandi (market) in Aligarh to transport goods in a container truck—a routine journey for them. En route, they were stopped by a group of men wearing saffron scarves. Identified by the victims as ‘cow vigilantes’, the men demanded a bribe of ₹50,000 to allow the truck to pass.
When the men refused to pay, the situation escalated into a brutal assault. According to the victims, members of the Bajrang Dal began beating them mercilessly. Their truck was allegedly set on fire by the mob.
“They beat us with sticks, iron rods, bricks, and sharp weapons. At one point, I lost consciousness,” Qureshi recounted to Maktoob.
The attackers, after failing to extort money, accused the group of transporting cow meat. “This is their new tactic. We told them they could check the meat, even keep us hostage, but they didn’t listen,” Qureshi said.
A viral video from the incident shows the four men covered in blood, pleading for mercy as they are dragged and beaten by the mob. One of the men, 40-year-old Aqeel—known locally as “Aqeel Driver”—suffered grievous injuries and was admitted to a private hospital’s Intensive Care Unit in Aligarh.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.