An All India Hindu Mahasabha leader in Agra has been accused of slaughtering a cow and implicating in the crime three Muslim men with whom he had an enmity.

R.K. Singh, additional commissioner of police of the Chatta area of Agra, said: “(Mahasabha leader) Sanjay Jat is the main conspirator. His followers and friends slaughtered a cow in the Mehtab Bagh area on the night of March 29 and told party member Jitendra Kushwaha to file a case against Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Nakim and Mohammad Shanu. The police arrested Imran Qureshi, a fourth suspect, and Shanu the next day. Later, the investigation revealed that the named accused had nothing to do with the crime. An inquiry suggests that Sanjay had an enmity with some people and wanted to implicate them in the case.”

The officer said Sanjay, a spokesperson of the Hindu Mahasabha, also enlisted the help of some minority community members to hatch the conspiracy. All of them will be booked soon, Singh said.

“Jitendra was found to have lied to us during the interrogation. He, Sanjay and a few others were near the spot of the cow slaughter, call records suggest, not those they named in the police complaint. Call records also show that the accused persons had not gone to that spot in over a month,” the officer said.

The police said the duo arrested seven days ago on the allegedly false charges would be released soon.

Sanjay claimed the police were falsely implicating him and his associates in the case. “We will organise a protest if they don’t probe the case properly,” he told reporters. “Some people are against me and are trying to give a different turn to the case.”

Another police officer said on the condition of anonymity: “The cow was slaughtered on the eve of Ram Navami to disturb social harmony. We had unconfirmed reports about such an incident but got conclusive evidence when they tried to implicate some innocent people.”

Sanjay was arrested in February in an extortion case. The police had said he and his associates often stopped vehicles transporting beef and extorted money by threatening to lodge police cases. He is out on bail.