On April 1, 2016, Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, and his son Irshad, were lynched by gau rakshaks while transporting cows from a market in Jaipur to their home in Haryana’s Nuh district. Khan was attacked despite having necessary permissions to transport the animals.

The lynching, which took place in Alwar, was recorded by a bystander. The video went viral. It showed Khan, a dark, lean, middle-aged man being beaten up by a group of men. Khan kept begging for mercy but to no avail.

Two days after the attack, Khan succumbed to his injuries. In his dying declaration Khan to the police, Khan named six men who had beaten him up – Om Yadav (45), Hukum Chand Yadav (44), Sudhir Yadav (45), Jagmal Yadav (73), Naveen Sharma (48) and Rahul Saini (24). He had heard the men call each other by these names, Khan had said in his declaration.

Nevertheless, on September 1, 2017, the Crime Investigation Department – Crime Branch, the agency probing the case, asked Alwar police to remove the names of these six men. The CID-CB had given a clean chit to six men based on the statements by the staff of a cow shelter, Rath Gaushala, as well as mobile phone records. Rath Gaushala is patronised by Jagmal Yadav.

Two weeks ago, around the same time, Karwan-e-Mohabbat had begun their month-long journey across the country. Led and conceptualised by activist and author, Harsh Mander, the caravan is a group of 40 people including professors, journalists, artists, students, lawyers and activists, who are traveling across the country to visit families who have survived lynchings.

So far, the caravan has covered parts of Assam, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The intention of the journey is to meet, listen and express solidarity with families whose members have been lynched and forge links between different communities.

On September 11, Newslaundry joined the group on its journey as it headed from Haryana to Rajasthan.

On September 14, as the caravan was completing its tour of Haryana, news began pouring in that the group would not be allowed to enter Rajasthan, where the group had aimed to visit the site of Pehlu Khan’s murder, Alwar, and pay homage to him.

Hindutva organisations like Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal had, nevertheless, demanded that Karwan-e-Mohabbat should be denied entry into the state. Around 9:30 pm, as the caravan reached the Haryana-Rajasthan border, the bus was received by a group of policemen. From there on, the bus was escorted by the police. On reaching Alwar, a peace meeting was organised by locals and civil society members. The event was well guarded and was attended by locals and civil society members.

As Mander began addressing the crowd, a member of the audience stood up, disrupted the talk by loudly expressing his displeasure and walked out. He was followed by few other locals. It was also rumoured that few members from the VHP were waiting outside the gate.

Subsequently, information about the clean chit given to the six accused reached the group. Mander became even more determined to pay homage to Khan at Behror.

In an interview to Newslaundry, Mander said, “These kinds of threats are a commentary of our times. A bus talking about love and camaraderie is being seen as a threat. This is exactly what we’re trying to talk about. So now it is more important than ever for us to continue”.

On September 15, despite tensions, the caravan, in the protection of 6 police patrol vans proceeded towards the police station to meet the SP. The group wanted to ask the police why the six accused were let go, despite being named in Khan’s dying declaration. By this time, a small group of right-wing members had gathered outside Behror’s Kailash Hospital, close to the site of Khan’s lynching.

The police denied Mander and his group permission to proceed towards the spot. Determined to go ahead, Mander sat on the road in protest. After 30 minutes of dharna, the police finally gave in and allowed Mander to visit the spot alone and pay shraddanjali. As the bus pulled out of Behror, few stones were pelted at the bus but nobody was injured.

The author can be contacted on Twitter at @nidhisuresh02.