A woman has alleged that her husband was lynched by a mob aboard a train in Bareilly last week because he had a beard and wore a skull cap.

Tabassum Khatun of Bakhatoli village in Bihar’s Kishanganj district has challenged the Government Railway Police’s (GRP) theory that her husband Maulana Tausif Raza was sitting close to the door of the Yog Nagari Rishikesh-Muzaffarpur Special (04314) when he slipped, hit a pole along the tracks and died on April 26.

“He had called me at 9.45pm on that night and said that some people were beating him up without any reason. He videocalled me soon after, and I saw some people dragging him. Suddenly, the screen went dark,” Tabassum was quoted as telling the GRP, which recovered Maulana’s body a few hours after the incident.

Tabassum told reporters that her husband had arrived in Bareilly to attend a religious event. He had studied at Darul Uloom Mazhar E Islam, a madrasa in Bareilly, till 2018 and still stayed in touch with the people there.

GRP inspector S.K. Verma said: “We have registered a case against unidentified miscreants based on the complaint of the deceased and started an inquiry afresh. We had recovered his body from the tracks on April 27 from near the Palpur railway crossing in the district.”

“The post-mortem report showed fractures in his skull at two places, injury marks on his body and bruises on his back. We had recovered a bag, Aadhaar and PAN cards, some religious texts and ₹2,540 belonging to the deceased,” the officer added.

Tabassum has given a 30-second video clip purporting to show the assault on her husband to the police.

Tausif Nurani, a teacher of the deceased at the madrasa, said: “He was a disciplined person and could never fight with anybody. We also don’t believe that he would sit at the door of a train. We want the government to probe the case seriously.”

Tabassum and several Muslim organisations have written to chief minister Yogi Adityanath to hand over the probe to the CBI.

AIMIM secretary Mukhtar Ahmad said: “We are disturbed after the incident. It is the responsibility of the government to protect citizens. Unfortunately, such incidents are not new in the state. We have written to the railway minister, chief minister, director- general of police of Uttar Pradesh and the GRP chief to probe the case and make the truth public.”