India: Members of a Muslim family in Gurgaon’s Dhamaspur village and guests who had come to visit them were beaten with sticks and rods, allegedly by 20-25 men, who barged into their home and attacked them on Holi evening.

The incident took place after some of the accused allegedly approached the boys from the family, who were playing cricket outside, and demanded that they ‘go to Pakistan and play’. One person was arrested for the crime late Friday night. According to the FIR, the incident took place around 5 pm, at the home of Mohammad Sajid, who hails from Uttar Pradesh and has been living here for the last three years with his wife Sameena and six children, reports the indianexpress.com.

In the complaint, Sajid’s nephew Dilshaad, who was among those beaten up, said the trouble started when he was playing cricket with some others in a vacant plot near the house.

‘Two unknown men came on a bike and said, ‘What are you doing here? Go to Pakistan and play’. They began fighting and when my uncle Sajid intervened, the boy sitting at the back of the bike slapped him and said, ‘You wait, we will show you’,’ he alleged in the police complaint, adding that 10 minutes later, they saw six boys on two bikes and several men on foot approaching their home, armed with ‘bhalas’ (spears), ‘lathis’ (sticks) and ‘talwars’ (swords).

‘On seeing them, we ran into the house, and they all began demanding that the men come out or they will kill us. When we did not go out, they forced their way into the house and started beating us up,’ he alleged.

In the minutes that followed, captured on a family member’s phone, the mob allegedly beat up the men, pushed the children and fled with the valuables.

Police said a case has been registered under IPC sections 148 (rioting), 149 (unlawful assembly), 307 (attempt to murder), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees), 452 (house trespass), and 506 (criminal intimidation). ‘Some of the accused have been identified. We are conducting raids and expect to make arrests soon,’ inspector Surender Kumar, SHO of Bhondsi police station.

Sameena said: ‘I was in the kitchen making food when I heard a racket outside. By the time I went out, the men had barged into our house and started beating people up. I begged them to leave us, but they paid no heed.’ ‘They broke the windows, our cars and took away valuables, including a pair of gold earrings, a gold chain and Rs 25,000 I had kept in the house,’ she said.

In the FIR, Dilshaad alleged the accused warned the family to ‘empty the house and leave or else we will capture it’.

Sajid, who is involved in repair of gas cylinders, old furniture and construction work, said, ‘We constructed this house three years ago. We keep to ourselves; something like this has never happened before.’