Five men were killed and another eight reportedly injured after a gun-battle ensued between two groups of villagers in Reda on the outskirts of Datia district headquarters in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday morning.
Datia—part of Gwalior division—is the home turf of Madhya Pradesh home minister Narottam Mishra and the incident has sent across shockwaves in the region.
Sub-divisional officer of police (SDOP) of Badoni, Vinayak Shukla confirmed to The Week that five persons of Dangi and Pal communities in the village had been killed in the dispute over cattle grazing.
Shukla said two days ago, a cow had entered the farm of the involved Pal family and had been shooed out. A dispute started over this incident and both parties had lodged police complaints. “On Wednesday they decided on a meeting to settle the dispute on the outskirts of the village, but things went wrong; shots were fired and five men – two of Pal and three of Dangi communities were killed.
Sources said that the dispute was between Preetam Pal and Prakash Dangi. Prakash, his son Surendra and brother Ramnaresh and Rajendra - son of Preetam Pal were among those killed. Another victim was Raghavendra Pal – son of Thakurdas Pal. Among those injured include Gyan Singh Pal, Thakurdas Pal and Mukesh Sirnam.
The SDOP told The Week that the postmortem of the deceased was underway and the arrests in the case will be started after that. Sources said 50 persons were rounded up in the village and heavy police force has been deployed given the seriousness of the incident.
Chambal range inspector general of police (IG) Sushant Saxena and Datia superintendent of police Pradeep Sharma reached the village to take stock of the situation. Sharma told The Week that five persons have been detained and investigations were on. He said everything was peaceful now in the village.
In May this year, the revenge killing of six persons of a family including three women in Morena district of neighbouring Chambal division had created a furore. The accused had killed six persons of the family over a 10-year-old feud over the killing of two persons in the family of the accused. The victim's family that had shifted to Gujarat after the 2013 murder case, was called back to the village in pretext of settlement; then attacked and killed the same day they returned.
