Senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Indresh Kumar on Monday said that lynchings in India would come to an end if people stopped consuming beef. His comments come days after a man was lynched in Rajasthan’s Alwar district on the suspicion of smuggling cows.

“Mob lynching cannot be welcomed,” Kumar said during a press conference in Ranchi, according to PTI. “If the practice of eating cow meat is stopped, many such crimes of the Satan could be stopped.” Kumar said that even if a law was in place and the government took necessary actions against such incidents, society needed the right values to deal with them.

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Kumar, an executive committee member of the RSS, claimed that cow slaughter was not approved by any religion, reported The Indian Express. “It is true that not a single religion in the world approves killing of cows,” he said. “Be it Christianity, which talks of ‘holy cow’, because Jesus was born in a cowshed; or Islam, where killing cows is banned in Mecca and Medina; or any other religion, killing a cow is not approved anywhere.”

Kumar criticised last week’s assault on social activist Agnivesh who was thrashed by members of two Hindutva groups in Jharkhand’s Pakur district for allegedly speaking against Hindus. “It is wrong and condemnable,” he said. “But nobody has the right to hurt others’ sentiments in the name of freedom of expression.”