After murder of Hindu teenager, Indian police list “cow vigilante groups”

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Indian police said on Thursday they were compiling lists of right-wing Hindu “cow vigilante groups” after a young man was falsely accused of beef smuggling and shot dead.

The murder of 19-year-old Aryan Mishra in the northern state of Haryana last month sparked unusual outrage – especially because the young man was a Hindu.

Cows are revered as sacred by the country's Hindu majority and their slaughter is illegal in many Indian states.

The authorities are often accused of failing to control Hindu hardliners who form gangs of “cow vigilantes” to attack people suspected of involvement in cattle slaughter, with several deaths reported each year.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has condemned attacks on cattle traders and beef eaters in the past, but critics say extremists have been emboldened by the Hindu nationalist rhetoric of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Many of those accused of transporting or killing cows are from India's 220 million-strong Muslim community, and social media is awash with videos boasting of vigilante attacks.

Mishra was killed on a highway on August 24 after an armed mob chased his car for 50 kilometers, believing he was transporting beef.

Five people have been arrested in connection with the murder. Senior Haryana Police officer Aman Yadav said the police were preparing a “list of cow protectors” to track their movements.

The recent attacks have heightened fears of an increase in violence against minorities and sparked a broader debate about religious intolerance.

“When vigilante groups are given a free hand by the authorities, tragedies like the one in Haryana are inevitable,” the Times of India wrote in its editorial on Thursday, warning that “vigilante justice against cows has become almost normal in the last decade.”

Earlier this week, a 72-year-old Muslim was beaten on a train after being accused of transporting beef.

Last month, a Muslim garbage collector in Haryana was lynched by a mob on suspicion of eating beef.

The Times of India wrote that the newspaper “expresses” that the shock over Mishra's killing “is based on the fact that he, a Hindu, was mistakenly the target of the assassination.”

“It is also telling that vigilante justice … does not provoke social outrage, let alone consistent and rapid police intervention,” it continues. “But the police and authorities should be very afraid.”