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

The killing last month of 19-year-old Aryan Mishra in northern Haryana state has sparked unusual outrage — much of it because the young man was a Hindu.

Cows are venerated 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 rein in Hindu hardliners, who form gangs of “cow vigilantes” to attack people accused of involvement in cattle slaughter — with several deaths reported each year.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has in the past condemned attacks on cattle traders and beef-eaters, but critics say that 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, with social media awash with videos boasting of vigilante attacks.

Mishra was killed on a highway on Aug 24 after an armed mob chased his car for 50 kilometres, believing he was transporting beef. Five people have been arrested in connection with the killing, and senior Haryana police officer Aman Yadav said the force was preparing a “list of cow vigilantes” to track their movements.

The recent attacks have heightened fears of rising violence against minorities and a wider debate about religious intolerance. “When vigilantes get a free hand from authorities, tragedies like that in Haryana are just waiting to happen,” the Times of India wrote in its editorial on Thursday, warning that “in the last decade, cow vigilantism has become near-normalised”.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2024