Phoolwati breaks down when she speaks of her husband Dhansha Invati, who was killed by a mob earlier this month. “I kept pleading with them to at least tell me where they were taking him. And to show me the cow meat that he had been accused of possessing. But what I received instead were blows and abuses,” she says.
On the night of May 2-3, Phoolwati and Dhansha had been fast asleep outside their kaccha house in Simariya village in the Kurai block of Seoni district in Madhya Pradesh. It was when she heard thudding sounds that Phoolwati woke up to see a group of men assaulting her husband. Their elder son Jai Prakash, who lives next door, also rushed out on hearing the commotion. He pleaded with the mob to let Dhansha go, but the men paid no heed. Threats from the mob forced Phoolwati and Jai Prakash to retreat to their homes. The men took Dhansha away. Phoolwati and her son are unsure of how old he was; they reckon he was “upwards of 50”.
Dhansha, a part-time farmer and casual labourer, was one of the two Adivasi men who were lynched during the early hours of May 3. The other, Sampat Lal Vatti, 52, lived in the neighbouring village of Sagar, also in Seoni district and around 400 km from Bhopal, the State capital. Sampat Lal’s family, who were not at home at the time of the incident, say they heard that he went to Simariya upon hearing of the assault taking place there and also became a victim of the mob.
