Mumbai - Suspected vigilantes on Saturday
killed a Muslim man transporting two cows in India, just 15
months after a similar attack spotlighted the growing influence
of pro-Hindu fringe groups.
Many Hindus regard the cow as sacred, but India's Muslim
minority engages in the trade of cattle for slaughter and
consumption, chiefly of buffalo meat, as well as dairy purposes.
Police in the northwestern state of Rajasthan said a group
of five to seven people surrounded the man, identified only as
Akbar, as he led the cows to his village in the nearby state of
Haryana and thrashed him to death on suspicion of cow smuggling.
"We are investigating the incident and will make arrests
soon," Shyam Singh, a police official in the district of Alwar,
told Reuters.
The incident took place soon after midnight, triggered by
the suspicions of a few nearby villagers that the 28-year-old
man was smuggling the cows, Singh said. Akbar belonged to the
farming community in adjacent Haryana.
Cow vigilantism by pro-Hindu groups has surged in India
since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party came to power in 2014, although most of the
country's 29 states have banned the killing of cows for meat.
Police said they took the badly beaten victim to a nearby
hospital, but he was declared dead.
"En route, the victim identified himself as Akbar and said
he was accompanied by another friend, who managed to escape,"
another district police official, Anil Kumar Beniwal, told
Reuters by telephone.
Beniwal said police had identified four or five suspects and
expected to make arrests by evening.
In a post on Twitter, Rajasthan's chief minister condemned
the incident and promised stern action.
"The strictest possible action shall be taken against the
perpetrators," said Vasundhara Raje, a member of Modi's BJP.
In the same district in April 2017, Pehlu Khan, a cattle
farmer, was lynched by a mob as he rode home from a market with
two cows and two calves in the back of his truck.
The incident fuelled concerns over how, under Modi,
pro-Hindu fringe groups, such as the cow vigilantes, were
fearlessly flouting the law to operate as private militias.