Five arrested in UP youth lynching case

Mumbai: The Government Railway Police have arrested five people on Thursday in connection with the lynching of an Uttar Pradesh youth in a local train near Mumbai.

Dharamdev Rai, a 25-year-old labourer from UP, was beaten up on board a local train from Khopoli to Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus station and later succumbed to his injuries.

More than a dozen people from Rai's village say they are returning to their hometowns in UP.

Many of his friends who left on Wednesday night had been working in Khopoli for the last couple of years, but they say they now fear for their lives.

"We have already lost our friend and don't want to anyone else to die. What can be a bigger threat that this. Sir if your near and dear one had been killed would you have asked us this question," Vipin Tiwari, a friend of Rai, said.

However, Additional Director-General of Railway Police KP Raghuvanshi said that security has been beefed up in all trains going to the North.

"There are 2500 RPF (Railway Protection Force) personnel on the job. Security has been tightened on long distance trains. Plain clothes security personnel have been deployed," Raghuvanshi said.

Raghuvanshi has on Wednesday ruled out that the lynching was a hate crime.

"One thing I can definitely say is that it was not a hate crime. When these fellows were sitting in the train, other fellows came, they wanted seats to be vacated for them and that is how it started. But when they asked, ‘where are you from, are you from UP are you a bhaiyya, that is how it started. But you cannot call it a hate crime," he had told CNN-IBN.

Meawhile, Rai's family members have refuses Maharashtra government's compensation of Rs 2 lakh.

"We refuse compensation of Rs 2 lakh announced by Maharashtra Government," Brahmdev Rai, brother of the dead youth, said.

The Maharashtra government has also submitted a preliminary report to the Central Government on the lynching of Rai. The Union Home Ministry had sought details from Maharashtra government on the killing of the UP youth.

Rai and three other labourers - Vijendra Rai (35), Satyaprakash Kaushal Rai and Shiv Kumar Verma (both 25) - from UP were on their way to Kurla on Tuesday afternoon when they were beaten up on the running train by 8-10 Marathi-speaking youth.

The people accused of assaulting Rai have been sent to police custody till November 3.