On suspicion of cow smuggling, on Friday night, a 28 year old man was beaten to death at Alwar in Rajasthan. The victim has been identified as Akbar Khan.
The villagers of Ramgarh spotted two men transporting cows on foot and attacked them. One of them died on the spot. The police have launched an investigation into the matter and stated that it is unclear if those two were cow smugglers.
“Akbar Khan, a resident of Kolgaon in Haryana, and another man were taking two cows to their village through a forest area near Lalawandi village in Alwar last night, when a group of people severely thrashed Khan,” said Subhash Sharma, the officer at Ramgarh police station.
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“It is not clear if they were cow smugglers. The body has been sent for postmortem, We are trying to identify the culprits and arrests will be made soon,” Anil Beniwal, senior police officer in Alwar told news agency ANI.
Earlier, on 4th July, Chief Justice of India Deepak Mishra said Cow vigilantism was not acceptable and it was the responsibility of the states to prevent this. The Supreme Court also warned against linking religion to mob violence saying, ‘a victim is a victim’.
“Nobody can take law into their own hands. It is the obligation of the state’s to see these incidents are prevented,” the SC stated.
The three-judge bench also dubbed cow vigilantism as mob violence, but reserved its verdict on compensation to victims and fixing responsibility.
