A Muslim man has died after he was attacked by hundreds of Hindu vigilantes while transporting cows in India, police said yesterday, amid rising tensions over the slaughter of the sacred animal.
Pehlu Khan, 55, died in a hospital late on Monday, two days after a mob attacked his cattle truck on a highway in Alwar in western Rajasthan state.
Cows are considered sacred in Hindu-majority India and their slaughter is illegal in many states.
In parts of northern and western India, squads of vigilantes roam highways inspecting trucks for any trace of the animal.
Alwar Police Chief Rahul Prakash said at least six others were injured in the attack, but had been discharged from the hospital.
Police are still trying to identify the attackers and have filed a murder case, he said, adding that an autopsy would determine the cause of Khan’s death.
Prakash said the victim and his associates were returning to their home state of Haryana when the mob intercepted their vehicle.
At least 10 Muslim men have been killed in similar incidents by Hindu mobs on suspicion of eating beef or smuggling cows in the past two years.
In 2015, a Muslim man was lynched by his neighbors over rumors that he had slaughtered a cow.
Police later said the meat was mutton.
Critics have said the vigilantes were emboldened by the election in 2014 of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Modi last year criticized the cow-protection vigilantes and urged a crackdown against groups using religion as a cover for committing crimes.
However, he last month appointed a right-wing Hindu priest to head the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, which is also home to much of the country’s meat industry.
Shortly after he was sworn in, police began shutting down butchers, grinding much of the industry to a halt.
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