Patna, Dec 31 (IANS): Over half a dozen persons allegedly assaulted a JDU leader until he became unconscious in Bihar's Aurangabad district. Following that they tried to make it look like an accident, mowing him down with a vehicle on Delhi-Kolkata National Highway (NH) 2 on Thursday morning. However, this was seen by a family member of the victim.

The deceased, identified as Baijnath Prasad Chandravanshi and hailing from Munshi Bigha village under Mufassil police station, was intercepted by Sudarshan Sharma, Pramod Sharma, Krishna Sharma, Raju Sharma, Rinku Sharma, Jitendra Yadav, Laldev Yadav and others when he was going on a morning walk in the village.

In a statement the deceased's family said, " Chandravanshi had personal enmity with the accused persons. They intercepted him on Thursday morning and thrashed him mercilessly. After Chandravanshi became unconscious, they took him to NH2 and mowed him down under the vehicle in a bid to create a scene of an accident."

Following the murder, a large number of villagers blocked NH 2. They also manhandled the SHO of Mufassil police station and other policemen when they reached the crime scene and tried to remove the villagers from the highway. In view of the extremely tense situation, the police personnel stepped back.

Senior officers including the ASP, SDPO, SHOs of Madanpur, Dev, Sadar SDO and others reached the spot. They assured the agitating villagers of stringent action and speedy trial of the accused.

Aurangabad SP Sudhir Kumar Porika told IANS: "The incident was reported around 6 a.m. on Thursday and villagers blocked NH 2 for around two hours. We have given assurance to them to nab the accused very soon. The accused are absconding and we have formed teams to arrest them."

"We have conducted the postmortem and handed over the body to the victim's family," Porika said.