The anti-beef wave has claimed two more victims. Two men were killed in Jharkhand, while herding eight buffaloes to the local Friday market. The bodies of the men, both Muslim, were found hanging by rope from a tree, their mouths stuffed with cloth. There was also evidence that they were beaten up before being lynched.
This news comes in the wake of the Kashmir murder in October 2015, where a teenager was attacked over suspicion of cow slaughter and the infamous Dadri lynching of September 2015 when a man was killed because people suspected he was eating beef. The meat later turned out to be mutton. In Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, many cattle traders have been attacked. In Latehar, the scene of the recent lynching, villagers have been agitated over the incident. At Balumath, not that far away, a cattle trader narrowly escaped a lynch mob.
The killing of men and children over suspicion of cattle slaughter or the consumption of beef needs to be investigated and snuffed out. There is enough evidence to prove that escalation is imminent, especially in states up north where law and order is negligible in rural areas, and where the anti-beef brigade is very powerful. On their part, the Centre has to condemn these attacks, even though the onus of maintaining law and order falls to the respective State. In the Dadri case, 15 men were charged with murder. But even this still preliminary. Action in these cases has to be swift.
