One more person was arrested in connection with the lynching of a village Forest Protection Committee Chief for protesting against illegal tree felling in Jharkhand’s Gumla district, police said on Saturday.?This takes the number of arrests in the case to five and all of them were forwarded to jail. Altogether 35 people were named as accused in the FIR and they are absconding, police said.

Shamim Ansari, the head of the Raikera Forest Committee, was beaten to death in a place under Bharno Police Station area by a group of men allegedly involved in illegal timber trade on Friday.?“We have so far arrested five people in this connection and they have been sent to jail on Saturday. Search operations to nab the accused are on. They will also be arrested soon,” Gumla Sub-divisional Police Officer Manish Chandra Lal told PTI.

The accused belong to a single village in Bharno block of the district, he said. Four people have been arrested in connection with the case on Friday.?Ansari, 45, was lynched after he stopped some people from cutting trees inside Raikera forest. A forest guard who was with Ansari managed to flee.

-With PTI Input