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(The Allahabad High Court on Monday, 26 October, expressed concern over the misuse of the Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act, 1955, “against innocent persons". In the backdrop of this development, The Quint is republishing this story from its archives, originally published on 21 November 2018.)
Reporting and Camera: Asmita Nandy and Meghnad Bose
Editing and Graphics: Prashant Chauhan
Executive Producers: Ritu Kapur and Rohit Khanna
Since the lynching of Mohd Akhlaq in September 2015, there have more than 35 cases of lynching related to cattle vigilantism in 11 states across India.
In Rajasthan’s Alwar alone, Rakbar Khan was killed in July 2018, Ummar Khan was shot dead in November the year before, and Pehlu Khan was lynched in public view in April 2017. All in the name of ‘gau raksha’.
THE LYNCHISTAN INSTRUCTION MANUAL
Step 1: Build a Network
At the core of the gau raksha network is the WhatsApp group. Or rather, the hundreds of WhatsApp groups.
Propaganda videos of gau raksha are circulated non-stop. With faster internet and more smartphones, these messages take just seconds to go viral, even if they’re fake.
But do they have any constitutional right to do so?
Once the network of vigilantes is ready, all they need is legitimacy.
Step 2: Provide The Legitimacy
These cow vigilantes have no legal authority to stop, search and harass anyone. But support from police ensures that they function with impunity.
Step 3. Breed the Impunity
The gau rakshaks say, since the crowd gathers in hundreds, there is no way to identify a single culprit. They it is easy for a person to shout ‘kill’ and get away with it in a large group of people.
Step 4: Execute the Attack
After the impunity is bred, the attack is next. And make no mistake - mob lynchings rarely happen “in the heat of the moment”. It’s an organised crime.
“When our mother is being slaughtered, it upsets us. Hence, I feel we should kill those transporting the cattle, if we are real Hindus. We can worry about the law later,” Lakhan added.
Step 5: Congratulate the Criminals
A leader should lead by example. When a crime is committed, he should condemn the act, not justify the crime or garland the criminals, or deny it ever happened, or blame the victims. But that’s not how it goes down with the gau rakshaks.
In fact, Rupendra Rana, accused of lynching Mohd Akhlaq in Dadri, will soon be fighting the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Noida. It’s the UP Navnirman Sena’s way of congratulating him “for respecting the gaumata and going to jail for her”.
THE COPS ARE COMPLICIT
In the Hapur lynching case, the family members of the accused justified the assault on the Muslims as efforts to protect the ‘gaumata’.
Despite their admission and all the evidence around, police turned a blind eye and claimed that the lynching was a case of “road rage”.
In Alwar, police took three hours to take Rakbar Khan to a hospital that was only six kilometres away, even stopping for a chai break in between. The cops first priority was not to take an injured man to hospital. It was to take cows that were perfectly fine, to a gaushala.
So what makes police act this way? Is it their personal communal bias - after all, they’re part of the same society as the rest of us?
NETA KA ASHIRWAD
Is it just bias, or do police act based on orders from netas who are seeking political mileage from incidents of mob lynching?
These “everyday reactions by the crowd” refer to cases of mob lynching of Muslims, and saying that such incidents will be more frequent is nothing short of a public threat, made by elected members of the state Assembly and the national Parliament.
FACTS DON’T MATTER
Pehlu Khan was lynched on the pretext that he was smuggling cows for slaughter.
But the fact is, that claim is blatantly untrue. Pehlu was transporting milch cattle that he had bought, which was worth way more than the price he would have fetched by selling the cows for slaughter.
So, where does all of these leave us? While some celebrate the sending of a message by murder, others live the consequences.
THE FEAR
THE LOSS
THE HATE
THE FUTURE
THE MODEL
The worst impact of it all is how easy it has become to replicate the model of the cow vigilantism culture - from Pehlu’s Alwar to Alimuddin's Ramgarh, to the heart of New Delhi.
On a night in April 2017, alleged vigilantes belonging to the group People For Animals attacked Muslim cattle traders in the capital, less than 15 km away from Parliament.
Assam, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh - the model of the mob, in the name of the cow, has been replicated pan-India.
Because when the cops are complicit,
Vigilantes encouraged
Minorities persecuted
Their patriotism questioned
Where murders are celebrated
And justified by ministers