“Gai hamari mata hai, police hamari baap hai,” the two frightened men shout, wincing in pain in the viral video. The cow is our mother, police is our father. They stumble, fall and limp along as officers flog the two Muslims and parade them through the streets of Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh on March 3.
There is no other way of saying this: the act was medieval, illegal, and unconstitutional, playing out after Hindu fundamentalists accused the two men of cow slaughter. In case you thought it was an aberration, six days later, the police took a similar approach in the city of Damoh in the same state, beating five suspects and forcing them to chant a similar slogan.
Cow slaughter is illegal not just in Madhya Pradesh but in at least 20 of India’s 28 states. Had the suspects in Ujjain and Damoh slaughtered a cow? Even if they had, the police had no authority to parade and flog them. As it happened, Hindu vigilantes in Ujjain merely found them to be driving a pick-up truck with a cow – and that in new India, especially if you are Muslim, is justification for random violence.
In Damoh, the men were accused of slaughtering cows, and their properties – in clear violation of Supreme Court orders against punitive demolitions – were demolished. As for parading them through the streets, the superintendent of police was quoted as saying inThe Hindu that the men were being marched to the court because the vehicle supposed to transport them had broken down.
Summary justice
Protected by police and empowered by the political rise of the Hindu right, goons have frequently meted out what they view as swift, summary justice in recent years. In 2018, we even saw a union minister honour eight Hindu extremists convicted of lynching a Muslim.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
