On Tuesday (6 December), a man was mob-lynched to death at the famous Kartik fair in Ujjain district of Madhya Pradesh.

The deceased has been identified as Deepu Jadam while the accused as Saddam, Salman Yasin, Irsqaq, Usman and Jishan. A fifth accused is a boy who is not yet 18 years of age and hence not named by the police.

As the incident involved a Hindu and a group of Muslims, it triggered protests by Hindu organisations in the district. Volunteers of the Vishwa Hindu parishad, among others, staged a demonstration outside the office of Ujjain’s municipal corporation demanding most stringent punishment for the accused.

As per Ujjain Superitendent of Police Satendra Shukla’s statement to the media, some men made obscene remarks against Deepu’s sister, after which Deepu and his family complained to the police.

When the family members were registering their statements with the police, the gang started thrashing Deepu and he died on the spot.

As per another report, an eye-witness said that when the police took the family members to the chowki for recording statements, Deepu was left alone on the spot with the gang.

The report has quoted an eye-witness named Sanjay Mali as saying that the men who passed obscene comments on Deepu’s sister were on a swing operated by one Khaliq. The accused are relatives of Khaliq.

When Deepu opposed their act, the swing was stopped and a spat began. The molesters called up a man over the phone and asked for more men for support. A mob arrived soon after and stabbed Deepu to death. 

The report says Deepu is 22 years of age and still a student. His father passed away many years ago. He was in Ujjain to meet a relative.

The Ujjain administration has reportedly demolished the houses of some of the accused, in line with the Madhya Pradesh government’s controversial ‘bulldozer justice’ action in several such cases of late.

Ujjain sub-divisional magistrate Kalyani Pandey has been quoted in the media as saying that “the houses of the three accused have bene demolished for illegal construction on government land”. She said the houses of other accused were being identified. 

Watch visuals of the demolition here.

All the accused are in their early twenties except for one juvenile.

Kartik fair in Ujjain is organised every year from Ekadashi to Purnima (full moon night) in the Kartik month of the Hindu calendar. The fair this year began on 7 November and was scheduled to wrap up on 6 December, the day of the incident.

In October, a Hindu man named Madhusudan Modi was similarly killed by a Muslim mob at a Navratri-Garba event for objecting to their molestation of women.