A team of the Crime Branch's Crime Investigation Department (CB-CID) has reached Karauli's Bukna village in Rajasthan to carry out the investigation in the death case of the priest who was burnt alive by a group of men over a land dispute. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's Government had ordered a CB-CID investigation into the alleged murder.
For the uninitiated, the priest Babu Lal Vaishnav was burnt alive by five people, who wanted to encroach on the temple land, near an agriculture farm in Bukna village on Wednesday. They set him on fire after pouring petrol, said the police. He was admitted in a critical condition to the SMS hospital in Jaipur where he died on Thursday night.
The family had meanwhile refused to cremate his body till their demands were fulfilled by the state government. The victim's family had demanded financial aid of Rs 50 lakh, a government job, security to them and the immediate arrest of the accused.
Thousands of people had also gathered in the village to protest against the brutal murder on Saturday. The last rites were performed on the same day.
Meanwhile, after the CB-CID investigation was ordered, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national spokesperson Sudhindra Bhadoria termed it "a cover-up".
Bhadoria said that the Rajasthan government has failed to provide safety and security to its residents. "The CB-CID probe, ordered by Rajasthan's Congress government to investigate the murder of the temple priest is a cover-up. There have been cases of gang rapes across Rajasthan, but the government has been busy trying to break political parties and engineer defections," he said.
(With input from agencies)
