The persecution of supposed beef carriers continues across the country. And now there is video evidence to back up the claims. Sometimes it is the action of the mob, other times, as in the video below, it shows the presence of the police through it all.
On Wednesday, news broke that two Muslim women were beaten up for nearly half an hour in Madhya Pradesh because cow vigilante groups alleged that the duo was carrying beef. Some leaders have tried to justify the attack, even as an analysis by a veterinarian revealed that it was buffalo meat.
The video above captures the assault on the two woman by members of the Hindu Dal, a regional party. Below is another clip of the incident, with one of the attackers shouting, "Gai ka maas banaoge? (Will you cook beef?)".
Given the thinking in BJP-ruled states, perhaps it's no surprise that the two women have been charged with "smuggling" since buffalo meat, cannot be sold in Madhya Pradesh without a permit.
What's worse, the Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Thawar Chand Gehlot, told The Indian Express that the cow vigilante group were merely "social organisations" and while the action they were taking was okay, they should "find out its veracity and then go".
Now, reports of these gau rakshak groups taking law into their own hands continue and with more leaders from the current dispensation joining the chorus of supporters, the violent occurrences show no signs of abating.
The video below, which is graphic in nature, shows that this trend is not a recent one. Although the video itself went viral on Friday, The Indian Express reported that the incident itself took place in May in Haryana and not Rajasthan as Pratik Sinha, who shared the video, said. In the video, three men can be seen beating another who is pleading to them to stop. A fourth person is filming the events and while he seems to be in cahoots with the attackers keeps reminding them not to "hit on the face or in the stomach". At one point, one of them even threatens the victim with a gun.
“We are Hindus and the cow is our mother. If the world says we are goons, let it be. We just want to protect our mother,” Monu, one of the perpetrators, told The Sunday Express.
The newspaper also reported that two of the attackers have photographs with top BJP leaders - Amit Shah, Anurag Thakur, Prakash Javadekar - and mention affiliations to organisations such as the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, Baba Umand Singh Gau Raksha Dal, amongst others, on their Facebook profiles.
Self-styled cow vigilante groups have stepped up their activities following the beef ban in many states. On July 20, reports emerged of two men being thrashed in Gujarat supposedly for skinning and killing a cow (which was later revealed by the Gujarat CID to have been killed by a lion) . The brazen perpetrators shot a video of the incident and uploaded it to social media, which led to outrage and protests in Gujarat and across the country.
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