Meat Found In Akhlaq's House Was Mutton Not BEEF | Dadri Murder Case

Mohammad Akhlaq's family had insisted all along that there was no beef in the house. And now a forensic test has proved precisely that: the meat that the mob found in Akhlaq's fridge, and which they claimed was the proof they needed to lynch him, was mutton, not beef. On the night of September 28, police had collected a sample of the meat from Akhlaq's house in Bisada and sent it to a vet for preliminary testing. These tests had suggested it was mutton, but the police chose to be doubly sure and sent the sample to a lab in Mathura for a conclusive test. And that report also confirmed it was mutton, a top government official said. The police, however, need not have sent the meat for any test, because whether it was mutton or beef had little bearing on the crime. In fact, there was no mention of beef in the FIR the police filed. The lab report, however, is significant because it proves how baseless rumours were spread against Akhlaq, and how a mob was incited into attacking a man who had lived peacefully in the village for over 50 years. According to the version that TOI pieced together by talking to the family and the police, a brown calf went missing in the village a day before Eid. And then, on the night of September 28, a child saw Akhlaq walk out of his house with a plastic bag with something that looked like meat inside it. This bag, Akhlaq reportedly threw in front of an electric transformer near his house. The boy informed a few others about this, and in no time, four youths, one of them the son of a local BJP worker, gathered inside a temple, having concluded that the meat in the bag must be that of the brown calf which Akhlaq had slaughtered. They announced this over the loudspeaker. In no time, a mob, among them Vishal, the BJP worker's son, descended on Akhlaq's house, and beat him to death and left his younger son, Danish, seriously injured. While most condemned the meaningless lynching, some right-wing hawks gave a spin to the narrative and justified the