By Varsha Singh
Dehradun, Uttarakhand: On the evening of 28 August 2025, a vehicle carrying a batch of sun-dried animal bones was set on fire right outside the Selaqui police station in Dehradun’s Vikas Nagar tehsil, located on the outskirts of Uttarakhand’s capital city.
A mob attacked the three men in the vehicle. A video of the incident went viral on social media, showing the burning vehicle with its consignment of bones—the primary raw material in bone china crockery and a range of artefacts—still inside.
Haseen Ahmed, 30, arrived at the scene shortly after the attack began, bearing original documents from a contractor licensed by the district panchayat, certifying that the vehicle had the requisite permissions to transport the bones.
Ahmed, a resident of Rampur village in Sahaspur block about 10 km away, works with his three brothers in the family’s traditional occupation—collecting carcasses from villages and bringing them to a designated site near the Sheetla river, where the carcasses are left to dry for several days until the bones can be collected.
“They didn’t even look at the papers,” he told Article 14 about the members of the mob he had tried to reason with. “They just kept beating us.”
Having received a phone call that a mob had halted his vehicle near the Khatu Shyam temple, Ahmed had rushed to the spot. By then, the driver had fled. A mob of 150 to 200 men attacked Ahmed and two other workers accompanying the vehicle. “I couldn’t even tell who was hitting us, anyone and everyone joined in.” Had the police not arrived, they could have died, he said.
Ahmed, who sustained head injuries, went to a local hospital from where he was referred to Doon medical college.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.