The incident took place in a village in the Karauli district, about 177 km from Jaipur.
Highlight
- The 5.2 acre land was given to the priest by a temple trust in the village.
- Another group had claimed the land as their own
- The village elders had ruled in favor of the priest.
Jaipur:
A priest in the Karauli district of Rajasthan, about 177 km from the state capital, Jaipur, died of burns after a group of people attacked him over a dispute over land.
The priest had about thirteen bighas (about 5.2 acres) of land that belonged to the trust of the Radha Krishna temple in a village in the district. But the land was given to the high priest to be cultivated as a source of income. Lands like these, which belong to temple trusts, are usually given to guardian priests for their use in exchange for the fact that they perform pujas and perform rituals in village temples.
Such lands are called “Mandir Mafi “and they are a source of income for the priests who take care of the temples of the Rajasthan villages.
But this land became the source of a dispute in Karauli of Rajasthan.
The village priest, Babu Lal Vaishnav, wanted to build a house for him on a plot close to his land that is bordered by a small hill. To begin construction, he had an excavator level the ground.
Another group of people from the dominant community of Meena opposed this and claimed the land as their own.
The dispute was brought to the elders of the town who ruled in favor of the priest.
Then the priest went ahead and placed bales of his freshly harvested millet on the ground as a token of ownership.
But the defendants allegedly began to build their own hut on the land the priest had leveled.
This led to an altercation. The priest, whose statement to the police has been recorded, said six people poured gasoline into their bales of low (millet) who lay at the disputed site and set it on fire on Wednesday. He claimed that they also poured gasoline on him and tried to set him on fire.
Suffering burns, the victim was rushed to the SMS hospital in Jaipur, where he died on Thursday night.
Senior Police Officer Harji Lal Yadav told NDTV: “The autopsy of the body is being done right now. We have registered a murder case and we have also arrested the main defendant, Kailsah Meena.”
The six people named by the priest in his statement to the police are Kailash, Shankar, Namo Meena and three others.
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