By Udit Hinduja
New Delhi: A day after cremating his son who was killed by gau rakshaks in Haryana, Bhavar Lal, a devout Hindu from Rajasthan, alternated between rage and grief.
“These aren’t gau rakshaks (self-styled protectors of cows), they are narabhakshaks (cannibals),” said Lal, who sat still for hours in the courtyard of his newly built concrete house in a small village near Kesrisinghpur in Rajasthan. His two other sons were on their way to Haridwar, Uttarakhand, with Sandeep’s ashes, following Hindu tradition.
Lal’s 28-year-old son Sandeep was murdered by a group of vigilantes near Palwal while he and his colleague were transporting two cows to Lucknow. The irony that the five men arrested for the crime were acting on information provided by the special police officer is not lost on Lal.
He was a painter, I don’t know how he got caught up in all of this.
A group of men on bikes intercepted the truck Sandeep and his companion Balkishan were driving, and beat them up with sticks, swords, and hammers. Thinking the two men were dead, the gau rakshaks dumped the bodies in a sewage canal 17 km away near Hajiupur village in Sohna. But Balkishan survived the brutal beating. He dragged himself out of the canal and made his way to Palwal where he approached the police for help.
This story was originally published in theprint.in. Read the full story here.
