Journalism of Courage
A spate of lynching incidents have been reported across the country in the last few months. The attacks have raised grave concern both with the society and the government at large. Here is a look at the attacks in the past three months:
May 18, 2017: Seven people were lynched in Jharkhand in tribal-dominated areas near Jamshedpur. The lynchings were done in two separate incidents following WhatsApp rumours of gangs active in kidnapping children in the region. According to a report in The Indian Express, police stood by watching the mob lynch four people. The police personnel who saw the lynching included a Deputy Superintendent of Police, a Circle Inspector, two Assistant Sub-Inspectors and at least 30 policemen including those from the local police station in Rajnagar.
May 2, 2017: A mob of right wing activists lynched a man after he eloped with a woman from a different community. The man was beaten to death. A press statement by the UP police said that members of Hindu Yuva Vahini were involved in the lynching. The incident took place in Sohi Village of Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district.
April 30, 2017: A mob lynched two men in Nagaon district of Central Assam on suspicion of them being cow thieves. Abu Hanifa, 23, and Riazuddin Ali, 24, were chased down by a village mob and assaulted brutally. The two were rescued by the police but couldn’t be taken to a hospital.
April 22, 2017: Four men purportedly from animal rights group People for Animals stopped a truck in Delhi’s Kalkaji area and beat up the occupants badly for suspecting them of being cattle smugglers. One of the men who was beaten up, Mohammad Rizwan, played dead to escape the ruthless assault.
April 21, 2017: Cow vigilantes attacked a family of five including a nine-year-old in Reasi district in Jammu and Kashmir. The attack happened in the evening when the nomad family was herding their livestock in Talwara area. They were attacked by cow vigilantes who beat them up badly with iron rods.
April 1, 2017: A Muslim man named Pehlu Khan, 55, was lynched by a mob of hundreds of cow vigilantes in Alwar in Rajasthan. He was beaten badly and died two days later in a hospital. He was lynched for allegedly transporting cows. It was later found that he was taking the cows for his dairy farm. His death caused a huge outrage across the country. Not long ago, the Rajasthan government had set the punishment for cow killing to life imprisonment.
March 9, 2017: A Bangladeshi security guard was lynched to death in Tripura who was allegedly part of a group of 12 who had come with intentions of robbery in a village. The incident occurred at Siddhinagar village under Puran Rajbari Police Station in southern Tripura along the Bangladesh border.
