Muslim man beaten to death over suspicion of cow smuggling in India
July 21, 2018
ALWAR, RAJASTHAN: A man was beaten to death by a mob on Friday night after he was accused of cow smuggling in the Alwar district of Rajasthan, Times of India reported.
According to reports, 28-year-old Akbar Khan who was a resident of Kolgaon in Haryana and another man who has been identified as Aslam were taking two cows to their village through a forest area near Lalawandi village in the district's Ramgarh region when a group of people severely thrashed him, station house officer (SHO) Subhash Sharma said.
“They were taking two cows on foot sometime between 12 -1 am last night when villagers stopped them. However, they tried to run away and the mob chased them and caught them. While Akbar was assaulted, Aslam managed to escape,” Sharma said, adding that “Akbar succumbed to his injuries.”
“We retrieved two cows and sent to a nearby gaushala. We have also registered an FIR under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 341 (wrongful restraint), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention),” he added.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje condemned the incident and assured that strict action will be taken against the perpetrators.
No arrests have been made in the case yet.
The incident comes just over a year after a farmer, Pehlu Khan, was lynched by a mob of cow vigilantes near Behror in Alwar district.
Khan and four others had been transporting cows in vehicles to Haryana’s Nuh district, when they were stopped on the Jaipur-Delhi national highway and attacked on April 1, 2017.
Mob rule
India, a nation of 1.25 billion people, is no stranger to mob violence, with well-documented cases of crowds turning on victims for every manner of transgression, real or imagined.
In recent years, for example, there has been an escalation in "cow vigilantism" — Hindu extremists murdering Muslims and thrashing low-caste Dalits accused of killing cows or eating beef.
In addition to the "cow vigilantism", crazed mobs in India have killed 21 people in the last two months over unfounded allegations forwarded on WhatsApp.
