Despite having sufficient evidence to establish the element of mob lynching in the case of 38-year-old Ashraf, a man from Kerala who was found dead on April 27 during a cricket tournament in Kudupu, Mangaluru, the police delayed registering an FIR with charges of mob lynching, a move that was found to be deliberate in order to protect those involved in the crime, The News Minute reported, quoting a fact-finding team's report.
The report stated the death followed an altercation with Ashraf over drinking water meant for cricket players after being questioned by a man who allegedly asked if he was a Pakistani, tauntingly referring to Muslims by the right wing, but eyewitnesses were sure that the attack was instigated by Ravindra Nayak, the husband of a former BJP councillor, but nowhere in the FIR was his name mentioned.
The report, jointly prepared by the Karnataka chapters of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), and the All India Lawyers Association for Justice (AILAJ), was released in Bengaluru on June 28 and titled ‘Lost Fraternity: A Mob Lynching in Broad Daylight’.
The fact-finding team alleged that the delay in filing the FIR and the failure to arrest key suspects appear to be deliberate actions intended to enable the accused to avoid prosecution, and called for the case to be transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) with a special public prosecutor appointed.
Further, the report addressed attempts to justify the mob lynching through the claim that Ashraf had raised “pro-Pakistan” slogans, asserting that even if such slogans had been made, they could not justify his killing. It cited Supreme Court precedent to argue that raising such slogans in isolation does not amount to sedition or incitement to violence.
The fact-finding team visited Mangaluru between May 9 and 10, spoke to Ashraf’s family members, activists, and senior police officers including Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Siddharth Goyal, and examined photographs and video footage, although they could not directly access eyewitnesses due to what they described as a prevailing climate of fear. Despite this limitation, the report heavily relied on testimonies relayed through local activists who had been informed of the events shortly after they occurred.
The report claims that the Police Commissioner Anupam Agrawal and DCP Goyal were present at the scene on April 27 and likely saw Ashraf’s body, which bore visible injuries including open wounds and slash marks. However, instead of registering an FIR for murder or assault, the police filed only an Unnatural Death Report (UDR) under Section 174(c) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, a decision the team viewed as an intentional effort to minimise the gravity of the crime and shield the culprits.
Images taken shortly after Ashraf’s death showed his body covered in mud with no upper garments or footwear, and post-mortem photographs later taken by activists revealed injuries consistent with the use of sharp weapons, including cuts on his arms, chest, thighs, and knees. The report states that these injuries would have been clearly visible to any officer inspecting the body.
Despite senior police officers visiting the site the same day, no FIR was filed until after the preliminary post-mortem findings were available. During a press conference held two days later on April 29, Agrawal maintained that the police had not initially suspected foul play and that the decision to delay the FIR was based on the lack of visible injuries at the time. However, the fact-finding team challenged this account by questioning why top-ranking officers would visit the scene if the death was not considered suspicious.
The police later suspended three lower-ranking officers — a rural inspector, an intelligence officer, and a beat constable — on the grounds that they had withheld information from higher authorities. The report dismissed this explanation as implausible, stating that it was unlikely the senior-most officers who had visited the spot would remain unaware of the circumstances if the lower-level officers had such knowledge. The team concluded that the suspensions were an attempt to deflect blame from senior officers and obscure the institutional failure to act promptly.