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A Man in India Was Beaten to Death Over Rumors He Ate Beef

A Muslim man in the northern Indian city of Dadri in Uttar Pradesh was beaten to death by a mob on Monday over rumors that he had butchered a cow and that his family was storing beef.
Photo via Flickr user Nicolas Mirguet

A Muslim man in the northern Indian city of Dadri in Uttar Pradesh was beaten to death by a mob on Monday over rumors that he had butchered a cow and that his family was storing beef, according to The Indian Express. Indian police said that they arrested eight people and are looking for two more after 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq, a blacksmith, was dragged from his bed and kicked and beaten with bricks outside of his home, despite protests from the family that they had not, in fact, eaten beef.

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The attack occurred after an announcement was made at a nearby Hindu temple that Akhlaq had slaughtered a calf. Akhlaq's 22-year-old son, Danish, who NDTV is reporting was a member of the Indian Air Force, was also seriously injured in the attack and is in intensive care. Akhlaq's daughter, Sajida, 18, says that her grandmother was also assaulted by the mob. The murder led to clashes between the town's Hindu and Muslim populations, and extra police had to be called in to the town, 30 miles from the capital of New Delhi. One man was later reported shot.

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Eating beef is a highly contentious issue in India, where 80 percent of the country's 1.3 billion people are Hindu and believe cows to be sacred. The issue reached a fever pitch this past March when selling beef was made illegal in India's second most populous state, Maharashtra, which incorporates Mumbai and is home to many of India's 138 million Muslims.

Prior to the ban, beef producers in Maharashtra complained of attacks on their delivery vehicles and drivers, and said that their cattle were seized and their processing plants blockaded by members of Hindu nationalist groups. Despite all the controversy, according to the USDA, India is the second-largest beef exporter in the world behind only Brazil—it was number one last year before Brazil pulled ahead—and its fifth biggest consumer. Much of that beef, however, is buffalo, which is not considered sacred.

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While killing cows has long been prohibited in many states, some have seen the beef ban, which extends to bulls and bullocks, as a sign that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party is shifting the country toward adopting conservative Hindu cultural values. Until May, the BJP government had pushed for a nationwide ban on cow slaughter and the beef industry, which is run primarily by Muslims. Many fear an erosion of India's secular tradition, not to mention the loss of a food that is culturally important to India's minorities and a source of cheap protein for the poor, including lower-caste Hindus.

The murder in Dadri was linked to a calf that had been killed several weeks earlier. Eating beef isn't illegal in Uttar Pradesh, but the slaughter of cows is. The laws elsewhere in India and furor surrounding cow protection have emboldened some to behave like vigilantes, according to a police officer who spoke to Reuters. In Maharashtra, home of the March beef ban, police have gone so far as to take cow "mug shots" to use for verification purposes in case of a crime involving a cow.

READ: India Is Upholding Its Beef Ban During the Most Meat-Centric Muslim Holiday

According to The New York Times, the local police superintendent said that the mob met at the temple after a man had asked a priest to convene a meeting because he had found a slaughtered cow. An unknown person then blamed Akhlaq.

Akhlaq's daughter, Sajida, told the Indian Express that the mob broke down the family's door. She said that what they had in their fridge wasn't beef, but mutton. The police have sent the meat to a lab for testing.

"My father was taken outside the house and beaten to death," Sajida said. "My brother was dragged to the courtyard downstairs and they used bricks to hit him on the head and chest, leaving him unconscious. They also tried to molest me and hit my grandmother on her face. They threatened to kill me if I said a word to the police.

"If it's not beef, will they bring back my dead father?"

Sajida said that the hostility in her town was new. Her family hadn't previously been discriminated against, and that the family had even had Hindu neighbors over to enjoy feasts in the past, even on Muslim holidays.