Udaipur murder: Accused face wrath of agitated crowd outside NIA Court amid national fury

Produced in the NIA Court in Jaipur, the four accused in the murder case of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal were attacked by a mob of agitated lawyers amid heavy sloganeering on Saturday. Massive slogans were raised against Kanhaiya's killers while they were being taken back to the police van after the NIA court sent all the four accused to 10-day NIA remand. 

Of the four accused produced before a special NIA court in Jaipur, Riaz Akhtari and Ghouse Mohammad were arrested on June 28, hours after they allegedly hacked Kanhaiya to death with a cleaver at his shop. The two others, Mohsin and Asif, were nabbed on Thursday, June 30 night for being involved in the conspiracy to 'avenge the insult to Islam' over a post shared on social media supporting Nupur Sharma after her controversial remarks. 

Eyewitnesses unravel the sequence of events 

In an exclusive conversation with Republic Media Network, an eyewitness, Rajkumar said, "They came for the fitting of the Kurta. One was standing outside, and the other, inside. We were doing the work, and Kanhaiya started taking the measurements. And suddenly, I heard him saying, ''Please don't kill me, I have not done anything."

Another eyewitness, Rajendra told the channel, "It was this road (pointing in the direction of the lane where Kanhaiya was killed). He had no enmity with anyone. I did not know why they killed him. I left for home (after the incident)...could not watch what happened."

'Reports citing NIA that no-terror angle has emerged are wrong'

Previously, it had come to light that the accused were allegedly linked to the Pakistan-based extremist outfit Dawat-e-Islami, and had even gone to Pakistan twice in 2013 and 2014. One of the accused, Ghous, was in touch with Pakistani nationals Salman Haider and Abu Ibrahim. Haider trained Ghouse to radicalise, while Ibrahim was involved in terrorist activities. 

The Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) have confirmed that they are probing terror links in the brutal murder that took place in Udaipur. In a press release, ATS said, "Certain reports in media citing NIA that there's no hand of a terrorist organisation in Udaipur tailor's murder incident is premature as of now. It still requires further investigation which is at the initial stage currently."