Ranchi: Police on Thursday said Touhid Ansari, whose mysterious death two days ago raised suspicion of an attack by cow vigilantes, was among the six persons named in an FIR after the seizure of 250-300kg of cattle skin in his village last month.“We had seized the cattle skin from Karma village in May. An FIR had been lodged in the case, naming six people. Touhid Ansari was one of them,” subdivisional police officer Radha Prem Kishore told TOI on Thursday. The FIR (case number 117/18) was registered at Kuju outpost police station on May 6.On Tuesday, a bike met with an accident at Rajrappa and, reportedly, meat fell out of the bike’s dickey on to the street. The man reportedly ran away from the site. Three hours later, a body was found metres from the site of the accident and identified later as that of Touhid Ansari by his family. While Touhid’s family alleged that this was yet another instance of ‘beef lynching’, police are yet to confirm if the meat was indeed beef, which is banned in Jharkhand.The spot where Touhid was found dead, Chitarpur, is in a sensitive area where reports of illegal beef sale are frequent. “We keep conducting raids on areas from where reports of illegal cattle-related activities come in. On Tuesday too, the officers in charge had conducted raids on several places after receiving information about some illegal activity. They, however, found nothing,” Kishore said.Chitarpur also happens to be the area from where Alimuddin Ansari had, on June 29 last year, allegedly bought beef before he was trailed by members of a gau raksha samiti and lynched for trading in “banned meat”.Police is treating the accident and Touhid’s death as two separate cases. “The postmortem report puts the time of death at 24-48 hours. The body was found around noon on Tuesday,” Kishore said. The accident at Rajrappa was reported at 9am. Asked how a body could have gone unnoticed for a day or more, the SDPO added, “Touhid may have been killed somewhere else and then the body dumped at the site we found it. We are investigating all possible angles.” Touhid’s family had on Wednesday said he had left home at 5am on Tuesday.Asked if the other vehicle in the accident had been traced, Kishore said, “There are many leads that have to be followed. We are investigating if the bike met with an accident, or if someone deliberately hit the bike.”

Stay updated with all the Latest Ranchi headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.