Once again, the country has seen a spurt in mob lynching and hate crime incidents reported from the BJP ruled states, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Jammu, while the police as usual attempted to cover up these incidents and treated them as ordinary crimes or even register cross-FIRs against the victims.
Thus, in the absence of any stiff law and the culture of impunity, hate crime incidents have continued to rise since the change of guard at the Centre in May 2014.
Latest addition in this series is a chilling incident of Islamophobia reported from BJP-ruled state of Haryana. A 28-year-old Muslim man was assaulted and his right hand was allegedly chopped off by two frenzied men in Haryana’s Panipat town. Though the incident happened on August 24, it has surfaced only now after the victim’s family members lodged an FIR on September 7.
In another incident, Aftab Alam, a taxi driver, was lynched in Noida when he reportedly refused to chant “Jai Shri Ram” on UP highway on September 6, 2020. The victim’s son Sabir’s statement that he recorded his father’s last call, made minutes before his death, in which the killers can be heard asking Aftab Alam to chant “Jai Shri Ram”.
Another gruesome incident reported from Aonla village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, where on suspicion of theft a hate-filled mob tied Shahrukh Khan (32-year) to a tree and rained punches and kicks on him for hours before he collapsed.
A 42-year-old farmer Shabbir Chaudhry was lynched by an alleged gang of eve teasers near his home in Phalian Mandal village in Satwari Police limits on the outskirts of Jammu city.
The victim’s relatives allege that it was a pre-planned murder by the gang which belongs to a “non-Muslim Community”. They accused a person named Mahesh of masterminding Shabbir’s murder. The attack comes at a time when Muslim Gujjar community is facing tough times in Jammu after the unilateral abrogation of the Article 370 which had accorded special status to the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir.
In Alam’s case, the UP police did not treat it as a case of hate crime but the family says, Alam was killed because he was a Muslim. “The call recording shows they were forcing him to chant Hindu slogans,” says his son Sabir and asserts that this is a crucial evidence to prove that his father was “lynched” by an organised “gang of Hindu radicals.”
Sabir says that there were no marks of violence on the car. “Everything inside the car was in order,” he says, “the men forced his father to give them a lift who were drunk and were trying to force my father to drink but he refused. He was dragged down and then beaten brutally to death.”
Recalling his visit to hospital, he says, “I cannot describe what I saw. His head had two deep gashes, on front and back, blood was oozing from his ears, his throat had strangulation marks.”
The police recorded the ‘Panchnama’. “After seeing my father’s body, we were traumatised and I do not know what the police wrote in the complaint that time.”
Likewise, in Shahrukh Khan’s case, the police said he had stolen a buffalo. However, Khan’s family has rubbished the allegations. “He worked in Dubai and other places in the Gulf. He has also stayed in Delhi or Mumbai. He has never done anything wrong”.
The police have registered two cases. One accuses 25 people of murder. The other case of buffalo theft, based on an FIR by villagers, names Khan and his three friends.
The police took him to the district hospital, where he died during treatment. Abhinandan, city Police Superintendent, said, “The villagers informed us about the incident. We took the man to the hospital. It seems he had overdosed on drugs. He was a regular user.”
However, post-mortem report of Shahrukh Khan debunked the police version and it revealed that he died of internal injuries, and didn’t establish a drug overdose.
The Haryana Police also showed the same attitude in the case of 28-year Ikhlaq Salmani who hailed from Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. Ikhlaq was beaten up and his right arm chopped off by chainsaw machine by two men in Panipat after they found that he was a Muslim.
However, the police claimed that Ikhlaq has been booked in a sodomy case that was lodged on 7 September, and that he hurt himself “when he jumped near a railway track”. Strongly refuting the police version, Ikhlaq’s family said this is a concocted story, and an attempt to cover up the crime.
A barber by profession, Ikhlaq said the incident took place on the intervening night of 23-24 August.
“Hamari ghaltee bas yeh hai ki hum Musalman hain” (Our only fault is that we’re Muslims), said Ikram, his elder brother.
The FIR stated that Ikhlaq was then beaten up mercilessly by the two men, who, the family claimed, belonged to the Saini community. It added that the attackers used an “RO machine” to chop off his right arm. Following this, he lost his consciousness, the FIR added.
His family members alleged that the police are trying to turn the case into an accident. “My brother wasn’t in his senses and the police took advantage and kept calling it a case of accident even in the hospital, but I waited to hear about the details from Ikhlaq and visited the area where he was beaten,” Ikram said.
However, Panipat Police denied that the incident is a hate crime. DSP, Panipat, Satish Kumar said Ikram’s family booked a cross FIR against a sodomy case lodged against him on 7 September. Irkam rubbished the charge and said this is a cover-up by the accused and the police.
Rising graph of lynching can be attributed to not enacting a new legislation. The Supreme Court directed the Centre to enact a law to effectively deal with hate crimes but the administration seems to be still in denial mode.
In a very strongly-worded ruling, in July 2018, a Supreme Court bench, headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, termed incidents of mob lynching in India as ‘horrendous acts of mobocracy’ and observed that individual citizens cannot take law into their hands. The bench also directed the Parliament to draft a new legislation to effectively deal with incidents of mob lynching. It also directed the Centre and state governments to take preventive measures to control the spread of messages on social media platforms which can incite a mob to lynch. It further explicitly directed the police to register an FIR under Section 153A of IPC and other such provisions of law against those who indulge in these kinds of activities.
In addition to this, the court also proposed day-to-day trial in fast track courts and additionally, maximum punishment to the accused in mob lynching cases. But nothing has happened since then.
Well-known columnist, Tavleen Singh observed, “My reason for repeatedly drawing attention to Hindutva violence is because I believe it is motivated not by some twisted nationalism but by uncontainable hatred of Muslims. This hatred is what persuades young Hindus to go out in gangs and hunt for the poorest, most vulnerable Muslims to beat to death.”
In similar vein, former IPS officer, M.W. Ansari said the reason for the steepest rise in numbers of hate crimes is that no harsh and tough action was taken against the perpetrators till date. Speaking with Radiance Viewsweekly, Ansari, former D.G. of Chhattisgarh Police, said it also indicates that there is tacit approval from the administration to the perpetrators of these crimes.
“Administration seems to be somewhere implicit, intrinsic and has given implied consent to the culprits because no rigours and stern action has been taken against them,” he alleged.
Quoting NCRB data, he said recent trend of the hate crimes, especially mob lynching, shows that there is hostile situation for the Muslims, SCs and STs and other marginalised groups. He stressed the need to develop political and social acumen in the community and how to avoid this kind of adverse climate and emotional issues.
Terming the slogan ‘Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas’ as mere a humbug, Dr Ansari said prisons are filled with Muslims, Dalits and other weaker sections and in UP 124 encounters took place and maximum victims are Muslims and Dalits and backward classes people.
In a chilling indictment of the prevailing social system, an official report on prison statistics revealed that just over half of all convicts and undertrials in Indian prisons are Muslims or Dalits or Adivasis. The share of these three communities in India’s population is 39.4% (2011 Census) but their proportion in prisons is 50.8%.
However, there are no government statistics of mob lynching and hate crimes in India but there are a few media organisations that have attempted to track them. According to IndiaSpend, there have been 117 gau raksha-related incidents of violence in India since 2015.
While condemning the recent incidents, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s Community Affairs Committee chairman, Malik Moatasim Khan described these crimes as a blot on the Indian society. He told Radiance Viewsweekly that it is the constitutional duty of the government to protect the life and properties of their citizens, particularly Muslims and Dalits but it is failing miserably. He also suggested that exemplary punishment be handed out to perpetrators that it becomes a deterrent to others. He also said, “We are ready for moral, legal support for the victims.”