Bokaro, April 27: A milkman was beheaded in front of his wife and three children — all under 12 — because he had been late to milk a Bokaro Steel Plant officer’s cows.

Neighbours watched in mute horror last night as Jaiprakash Singh, the security officer, held Upendra Yadav down and ordered his sons to chop off the 32-year-old’s head.

While younger son Chhotu, 22, helped his father hold the ailing milkman who had been dragged out of bed, the older Kaushal, 26, brought the sword down.

“He (Jaiprakash) always boasted of being a Rajput and a landlord and claimed it his right to keep swords at home,” recalled a neighbour of the milkman, who lived barely 50 yards from the officer’s quarters.

Meena Devi, the milkman’s young widow, wailed that her husband had been going late to Jaiprakash’s house for the past three days because he was ill and their eldest child Mithilesh, too, was not keeping well.

Upendra had been milking the officer’s cows for a few months.

“Look what has been done,” Meena cried.

A drunk Jaiprakash, 55, reached their hutment around 11 pm and shook Upendra, sleeping on a cot, awake. The officer tied a towel around the man’s neck and dragged him out before ordering his sons to get the sword.

Meena and her neighbours begged the officer to let Upendra go, but he warned them to keep off. A gasp of disbelief went out as the sword severed the milkman’s head.

The couple has three children, Mithilesh, Nitesh and Mukesh.

About 500 people today marched to the officer’s house but by then he and Chhotu had fled and only the officer’s wife was at home. Kaushal was found hiding in a neighbour’s house and arrested. He has a criminal past and had shot dead a youth in the neighbourhood a few years ago. He was imprisoned but released on bail late last year.

A neighbour of the Yadavs remembered several occasions when the security officer was seen brandishing his sword in public and bragging about being a zamindar. Jaiprakash, the neighbours said, was foul-mouthed and arrogant.

The mob surrounded the local police station, demanding that Kaushal be handed over to them for justice. The police and administration officials struggled to keep the protest from spinning out of control. By afternoon, the mob appeared to have given up the demand for Kaushal and were only asking for a job and compensation for Meena.