There is disturbingly little remorse in the village in northern India where a mob lynched a 50-year-old Muslim man because the local temple publicised a rumour that he had consumed beef, writes Senior Executive Editor of NDTV India, Ravish Kumar.
Dadri district where Bisada village is located, is just 25 miles from India’s capital New Delhi.
Before killing Mohammad Akhlaq, the mob made him run to the farthest corner of his home. They broke down his door with such force that instead of giving way at its hinges, it cracked right down the middle. They smashed a sewing machine and used it to beat him to a pulp.
Such was the force of their violence that they bent the grills that barred the top-floor windows as if they were made of flimsy wire.
All of this cold fury against the only Muslim family in the area rode on just a rumour propagated on the loudspeakers of the local Hindu temple that Akhlaq had eaten beef.
Mob lynchings of India’s minority Muslims have made recent headlines.
On March 5, some 8,000 people broke into the Dimapur Central Jail, dragged 35-year-old used car businessman Syed Farid Khan out, paraded him naked, pelted him with stones and beat him before dragging him by a motorcycle to a clock tower about 7 kilometres away. He died on the way.
The body was displayed from the clock tower’s railings until the police took it down.
Farid Khan was initially and erroneously reported to be an “illegal Bangladeshi immigrant,” a claim easily made because of his religion, Foreign Policy magazine says.
Two days after he was killed, it emerged that he was an Indian citizen – an Assam native belonging to an Indian army family. Two of his brothers were in the Indian Army. Another brother died in service during the Kargil War. His father had retired from the Army’s Military Engineering Service.
Furthermore, on March 11, a government report challenged the rape accusation for which he had been in the jail.
Temple announcement
Everyone agrees that the announcement came from the temple, but there seems to be confusion over who had made it, NDTV’s Ravish Kumar writes.
“It was only later that we got to know that an announcement that someone had slaughtered and eaten a cow had been made from the Hindu temple,” Akhlaq’s daughter Sajida told the AFP news agency.
Pankaj Kumar who owns a shop near the temple premises confirmed to the BBC that he had heard the announcement from the temple.
Locals told the BBC that “some unknown people” had jumped into the temple and used the public address system, insisting that temple authorities had been “sick” and were therefore innocent.
The priest of the temple and his assistant have been taken in for questioning by police, and six people have already been arrested based on the testimony of the family. Another four men are absconding.
The arrests sparked further unrest. Protests against the police action soon turned violent with mobs setting fire to vehicles and vandalising shops nearby. Police had to resort to firing in the air to bring the situation under control. One person was injured.
The situation in the area was still tense on Tuesday and additional forces have been deployed from neighbouring areas. Curfew had not been imposed, but streets were deserted and shops remained shut.
Terror
Akhlaq, a farm worker, was already asleep in a room next to his 22-year-old son, Danish, when his attackers, wielding sticks, swords and cheap pistols burst into their home, accusing the family of having slaughtered a cow and consuming it.
Uttar Pradesh is among a number of Indian states that have tightened laws banning cow slaughter and the sale and consumption of beef, a religious matter for India’s Hindus, who comprise 80% of the country’s 1.2 billion people.
“They came from everywhere. Over the walls, through the gate … They just barged into the house, shouting that we had slaughtered a cow,” says his 75-year-old mother, Asghari Akhlaq.
“I asked them how can we bring a cow into the house without anyone seeing? We are the only Muslim family in this neighbourhood.”
Akhlaq’s old mother was also beaten by the crowd. There are deep wounds on her eyes.
Some meat found in the fridge, that the family insists is mutton, was held to be proof.
A group of attackers made their way into the room where Akhlaq was asleep. They bashed his head with a sewing machine lying nearby and dragged him and Danish out of the house.
From that point the beating became even more brutal. Both Akhlaq and Danish were beaten with bricks, kicked and stabbed repeatedly, his family members told the BBC.
“We were completely taken by surprise … we are the only Muslim family here [but] we have been living here for four generations,” Akhlaq’s elder brother, 55-year-old Jameel Ahmed told the BBC.
“We are still in shock that people we lived alongside for so long would do this to us,” Akhlaq’s eldest son Sartaj, who was in Chennai when the attack took place, told the BBC.
Mohammed Danish remains in the Intensive Care Unit and has already had two complicated brain surgeries. He is barely responsive to touch, has not spoken yet and is still on ventilator support. He had a fractured skull with bleeding in the frontal lobe, the Indian Express newspaper reports.
Danish’s elder brother, Sartaj, who works as a technician for the Air Force in Chennai, has watched over him since Tuesday.
“He has not spoken yet. That is all I am waiting for … for him to open his eyes, recognise me and say something, say anything.”
No remorse
Ravish Kumar writes: How is it possible that no one looked bothered by what had happened here? How is it that I didn’t find a single person who looked ashamed or had even a shred of remorse? Why was no one distraught that thousands of people from the village were transformed into a killer mob?
By the time I reached Bisada, most of its young men had disappeared. Some families said their sons were unwell. Others said their sons were not in the village. The villagers blame four or five outsiders for instigating the violence.
On the day of the killing, an announcement had been made over the temple loudspeaker, and within minutes thousands had collected outside Akhlaq’s house. The narrow street could not have held them all. The mob must have spilled over, all across the village.
Yet, when I asked why so many people listened to a small group of outsiders, I was met with silence. No one saw this massive crowd. No one recognised them. Everyone says those who have been arrested are innocent.
Elders in the village say, even if it was beef, it was for the police to take action. But the young men of Bisada go straight to the issue of sentiment and beliefs.
The way they react to emotive issues clearly shows that someone has already done some spadework here.
Someone has planted the seeds of a poisonous tree, which is bearing fruit in their minds now. They are not even willing to listen to the prime minister’s statement that communalism is poisonous.
Only the courts can decide who is guilty, but the manner in which Bisada village has returned to normalcy makes me think that the police will never be able to identify the people who made up that murderous crowd.
The crowd, for its part, has already delivered its judgement.
It has already killed Mohammad Akhlaq.