A forest employee was lynched to death while several other employees were injured when henchmen of mining mafia attacked them under Bhatarkup police chowki area late on night on Saturday in Chitrakoot.
SP, Chitrakoot, Pawan Kumar informed that five sleuths of the forest department, led by forest inspector Harishanker Singh, went to Mau Titihara village to nab those involved in illegal mining of red mud. “However, the people present at the spot incited the villagers and later attacked them with sharp edge weapons in which all five were injured and later one of them succumbed to his injury,” he informed.
The deceased was identified as watchman Ram Swarup Yadav while those injured were identified as forest workers Chandrashekhar and Kallu. Both were admitted to the hospital in Allahabad under critical condition.
The officer said that the mining mafias could be behind the attack but also did not rule out the possibility that the villagers would have mistaken the forest sleuths as child robbers and would have attacked to the forest team just out of mistaken identity. He said that police was investigating the matter.