A 19-year-old boy, studying in Class 12 in Haryana’s Faridabad, was allegedly chased in a car and shot dead by a group of five cow vigilantes who mistook him for a cattle smuggler.

The victim was identified as Aryan Mishra. The members of vigilante group have been identified as Anil Kaushik, Varun, Krishna, Adesh, and Saurabh.

A Duster car in which the boy, Aryan, and his friends Harshit and Shanky as well as two other women seated in the back of the vehicle, was chased by the members of cow vigilante group on the night of August 23 for about 30 kilometres near Haryana’s Gadhpuri on the Delhi-Agra National Highway.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that on the night of August 23, they had received information that some suspected cattle smugglers driving two SUVs were doing recce in the city. They mistook the victim and his friends, Shanky and Harshit, for those cattle smugglers and followed their car, a senior police officer said.

The accused told the police that when they asked the victim’s car to be stopped, the driver accelerated, following which they opened fire and Mishra was killed on the spot near the Gadhpuri toll in Palwal, the police officer said. All the accused have been sent to judicial custody after being presented in a city court, he said, adding that the illegal weapon and the car used in the crime have been recovered.  Further investigations are underway, the police said.

Meanwhile, Haryana police arrested the eighth accused on Sunday in connection with a lynching in Haryana’s Dadri, where a migrant worker from West Bengal was beaten to death on suspicion that he had eaten beef.