If you live in India, you must have heard names like Mohammad Akhlaq of Dadri, Pehlu Khan of Alwar or Junaid of Haryana.

These beside many other cow smugglers and criminal kingpins were all declared the victim of Hindu violence by mainstream media of India. The key word used being “lynching”. The use of this word has now become commonplace, even hegemonic.

A majority of these cases later turned out to be be false and based on a malicious media narrative. But before that, India was declared a land where Muslims are been lynched by Hindu mobs. One Congress lawmaker facing charges on the death/murder of his wife went even further to declare India as “Hindu Pakistan”. Another journalist of Huffington Post compared Hindus to white supremacist of the USA and Ku Klux Klan.

Even western media outlets like New York Times and Washington Post used highly communal headlines to incite religious tensions. French and German media publications too did not miss any opportunity to peddle this narrative.

India has been made synonymous with terms like “lynching” by a dominant section of the western press.

But both mainstream media in India and abroad failed to take in to account the hundreds of attacks and murder of Hindus by cow smugglers ranging from western most state of Rajasthan to remote villages of North Eastern Meghalaya. Over 2000 cow smugglers have been arrested in past three years just in the state of Rajasthan. In many cases, cow smugglers even attacked the police party and fired to avoid arrests. Historically, cattle theft/lifting has been a source of riots and communal violence since the Indian occupation of Islamic invaders and British Empire. Muslim gangs further expand their operations around Islamic festivals like Bakrid where cattle are slaughtered in vast numbers.

Muslim gangs even attacked a Hindu youth in the south Indian state of Karnataka because he was speaking to a Muslim woman. In another incident from western state of Gujarat, a Muslim mob broke in and burnt down the house of a Hindu man because he eloped with a Muslim girl.

But perhaps few cases can match the brutality of the violence that was inflicted last week on two Hindu priests in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Priests Lajja Ram (65) and Halke Ram (53) were tied to their bed, stabbed multiple times, their tongues cut out and then mercilessly slaughtered by a local Muslim gang. All this happened inside the Hindu temple complex where they lived.

The criminals also attacked a third priest Ramsharan, 56, who received serious injuries and is still battling for his life. All three priests came from backward Hindu caste groups and were spending their old age doing prayers and serving at temple’s cow shelter home

Their crime?

The two priests had dared to inform the UP police of cow slaughtering near their temple in Auraiya district located less than 200 km from capital Lucknow. All the five accused arrested in this case are Muslims and relatives of two other locals — Taufeeq and Shahnawaaz — arrested on charges of cow slaughter based on complaint filed by the two deceased Hindu priests.

In any other nation, such horrific crimes would have made it to the front pages. But not in India. Both PM Narendra Modi and Congress President Rahul Gandhi represents the state of Uttar Pradesh in the Parliament. Yet none of them have yet spoken on this crime.

This brutal murder is not a mere act of murder. It represents the expanding Jihad inspired hate that is directly instigated by Muslim criminal gangs. Sadly, for mainstream Indian media this is only an issue when the victim happens to come from Muslim or Christian community. Not a single western media agency even bothered to report this horrific crime.

It is not the first time that communal murder of Hindus has been under-reported. Hours after the above incident, a temple priest and his help was murdered in Karnal district of Haryana. Hacking of elderly Hindu priest is a regular affair in Bangaldesh since last many years. The trend seems to have caught up in North India too.

The growing instances of reporting crimes against Hindus using different editorial standards and rampant peddling of Hinduphobia by a section of media barons confirm how Hindus have off late emerged lesser humans for Indian media. India has already witnessed how genocide of Kashmiri Hindus has been accepted and forgotten by media, government and judiciary alike. Any voice that is raised to remind the historical brutality and crimes committed against Hindus during Islamic occupation of India is declared “right-wing populism”.

While CM Yogi Adityanath must be commended for timely action and ensuring arrest of the criminals, the brutal killings is a reminder why UP Police is in dire need of modernisation and capacity building to deal with such forms of communal terrorism. Such crimes against Hindu priests often pick up around the Muslim festivals. This is another issue that must be probed by local police and authorities.

While mainstream media must be questioned on its bias in reporting Jihadi violence against Hindus and Hindu priests, it is also pertinent that Indian government recognise such incidents and lead a debate. Indian secularism should not be allowed to become a shield that protects Muslim terrorists murdering innocent Hindu citizens.

It should be expected that Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath (who happens to be a Hindu priest himself) ensures that the two murdered priests are accorded state recognition and declared as martyrs. The priests were killed only because they happened to be Hindu priests and fulfilled their citizens’ duties by informing the police rather than taking the law in their hands.

If Indian fails to stand up for its peaceful priests, it will only promote more such incidents of communal violence that will target Hindu priests and temple. It is high time that Modi government of India take action to ban all forms of religious slaughtering in India beside implementing its constitutional directive enshrined in Article 48 of the Indian constitution.