Police in northern India's Uttar Pradesh state arrested four members of a right-wing Hindu group Wednesday after charging that they slaughtered a cow near the city of Agra and tried to frame some Muslims in the case, apparently to spur hostility toward Muslims.
The slaughter of cattle – considered sacred by Hindus -- is banned in many Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, where conviction can incur up to 10 years imprisonment and a fine of up to about $6,000.
Rakesh Kumar Singh, one of the assistant police commissioners in Agra, told reporters April 8 that Jitendra Kushwaha, a senior leader of the Hindu right-wing group All India Hindu Mahasabha, or AIHM, filed a police complaint alleging that during the early hours of March 30, he had witnessed the slaughtering of a cow by four Muslim men.
The group even staged a demonstration demanding arrest of the “Muslim culprits” — Mohammad Rizwan and his three sons.
The police arrested Rizwan and his sons, booking them under the UP Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act. However, after investigating, the police determined that the four Muslims were not involved with the case and that Sanjay Jat, an AIHM spokesperson, had hatched the conspiracy to slaughter the cow.
On April 8, the police announced that the four Muslims were innocent and Hindu activists were the culprits and would be arrested.
“Sanjay Jat is the main conspirator. His followers and friends slaughtered a cow…[and asked] Jitendra Kushwaha to file a case against Mohammad Rizwan [and other Muslims] … Later, the investigation revealed that the named accused had nothing to do with the crime,” Singh told the Indian newspaper The Telegraph.
“Jitendra, Sanjay and a few others were near the spot of the cow slaughter, call records suggest, not those they named in the police complaint. Call records also show that the accused persons had not gone to that spot in over a month.”
In recent years, during the festival of Ram Navami in India, communal tension often breaks out between Hindus and Muslims. An unidentified police officer in Agra told The Telegraph: “The cow was slaughtered on the eve of Ram Navami to disturb social harmony.”
Hindu leader blames rivals
Jat, however, has insisted he is innocent.
“Some of my rivals are trying to falsely implicate me and some of my colleagues in this case. We will conduct protest demonstrations if the case is not investigated properly,” Jat told local TV channels.
Social activists said that the Hindu right-wing group organized the killing of the cow in an attempt to frame Muslims and incite Hindus against them.
The news of a cow being slaughtered at the behest of the leaders of the AIHM with an aim to create communal tension and use this as an excuse to do violence against Muslims is not surprising, Delhi University professor and social activist Apoorvanand, who uses one name, told VOA.
“This has been the modus operandi of the Hindu supremacist bodies for a long time. There are numerous cases of their people throwing beef in temples. Members of various Hindu supremacist groups have been caught planting the national flag of Pakistan at different places in India. And, they blamed all the acts on Muslims, to incite Hindus against Muslims,” Apoorvanand said.
“They can go to any extent to defame Muslims and then attack them using that pretext.”
Kolkata-based social activist Malay Tewari said that there are scores of instances of “false-flag operations” by Hindu right-wing group activists in India.
“Through such false-flag operations, the Hindu right-wing groups, who work like foot soldiers of India’s ruling BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], aim to whip up anti-Muslim passion to polarize Hindus against Muslims. India is a Hindu-majority country. A polarization on communal lines immensely helps Hindu nationalist BJP garner more votes from the majority community,” Tewari told VOA.
“In a cow slaughter case, Muslims are usually convicted to the strictest punishment of jail terms and fines. Let us see if the Hindu right-wing activists in the Agra case are awarded the same level of punishment, too,” he said.
