Police from adjoining districts have been summoned to Jethwar in Pratapgarh district of central Uttar Pradesh to prevent any communal violence after the murder of Maulana Mohammad Farrukh, the district general secretary of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, on Saturday.

Mohammad Asad, the son of the deceased, told reporters on Sunday that Chandramani Tripathi and his five family members, who live in the same village of Sonpur, killed his father when he had gone to their house to discuss a land-related issue.

“My father had gone to Tiwari’s house to resolve a dispute. He had bought land from Tiwari and paid him the agreed amount. But Tiwari was demanding more. Eyewitnesses told me that as my father refused to do so, Tiwari, his sons Sagar and Vaibhav, his wife Seema and neighbour Devi Prasad attacked him with axes and sickles and killed him on the spot. I saw my father lying dead in their verandah when I went there after knowing about the incident,” said Asad.

He alleged that the police allowed the killers to flee. “They ran away many hours after the incident. Had the police acted quickly after we called them, the killers would have been arrested,” he added.

Pratapgarh superintendent of police Satpal Antil said: “We arrived at the spot as soon as the information reached the local station. We have registered a case against four men and a woman of the family and are searching for them.”