Inquiry into response to fatal attack by Hindu cow vigilantes on Muslim man Akbar Khan

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Indian police have begun an inquiry into officers alleged to have taken a tea break instead of taking a critically injured lynching victim to hospital.



Akbar Khan died of his injuries after being attacked by a gang of Hindu cow vigilantes in Alwar district, Rajasthan state, on Friday.

Cows are considered sacred in Hindu-majority India, where squads of vigilantes often roam highways inspecting livestock trucks.

The murder stoked tension in the area amid media reports that police wasted time before taking Khan, 28, to hospital. Officers also allegedly cared for the cows first, transporting them to a bovine shelter much further away.

“Doubts have been cast on the initial response of the local police,” the state police chief, OP Galhotra, said in a written order on Monday. “A team has been constituted to look into the circumstances leading to the alleged delay and connected issues.”

India’s rightwing government, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been accused of ignoring the rising number of vigilante attacks on minority Muslims in the name of cow protection. Rights groups say Hindu mobs have been emboldened under the party, which came to power in 2014.

The government on Monday sought a report from state authorities on the latest lynching and “steps taken to restore peace” in the area. Two suspects have been arrested so far.

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Slaughtering cows is illegal in many Indian states; some farmers also require a licence for transporting them across state borders.

In two prominent cases last year, a dairy farmer was killed on a roadside for transporting cows and a Muslim teenager accused of carrying beef was stabbed to death on a crowded train.



India has also been rocked by a separate spate of lynchings, with 23 people killed in the past two months after being accused of child abduction in viral messages circulated on WhatsApp.