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New Delhi: Azeem, a 24-year-old Muslim man from Moradabad, died at a Delhi hospital on August 4, four days after he was brutally thrashed allegedly by a group of kanwariyas following a road accident in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur district. He leaves behind a wife, an infant son, and an ailing father, Intezar, who has been bedridden for over a year.

“My boy was beaten up and killed. Who knows exactly what happened?” Intezar told The Wire from his residence in Moradabad. “All I want is justice. He was our sole breadwinner.”

Azeem’s death stemmed from a collision near Shiva Dhaba, ahead of the Brijghat toll plaza in Hapur, where the mini-truck he was driving to work from Moradabad to Delhi collided with a parked auto-rickshaw carrying kanwariyas.

Azeem was rushed to a local nursing home in Garhmukhteshwar, shifted to SS Hospital in Meerut in a comatose state, and later transferred to Delhi, where he ultimately succumbed to his injuries without ever regaining consciousness.

While police booked the auto driver along with half-a-dozen other occupants of the auto........

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