NEW DELHI — The unabated violence across India over cow protection and beef consumption refuses to die down. In yet another incident, two Muslim women were beaten up at a railway station in central India on suspicion of carrying beef, an offense in many parts of the Hindu-majority country, police said on Wednesday.
The meat the women were carrying has since turned out to be buffalo, but police in Madhya Pradesh state said they were attacked on Tuesday at a busy station, apparently after a group of vigilantes raised suspicions.
Video footage broadcast on local television channels showed a group of women slapping, kicking and punching the two as a large crowd gathered with some filming the attack on their mobiles.
The two women were subsequently arrested on suspicion of carrying beef. Tests found it was actually buffalo, and they now face the lesser charge of carrying commercial quantities of meat without a license.
Cows are revered by Hindus and slaughtering them is illegal in most Indian states.
Several states also bar the sale and possession of beef, and there has been a recent upsurge in attacks by vigilantes from the Hindu right on people suspected of killing cows.
“We had prior information and had deputed force to arrest them but unfortunately some people attacked them,” said Manoj Sharma, district police chief of Mandsaur where the incident occurred. None of the people who attacked the two women had been arrested for the assault, Sharma said.
It comes days after a group of low-caste Hindu men were beaten by vigilantes in the western state of Gujarat on suspicion of killing a cow — a charge they denied.
The men said they were taking the dead cow to be skinned — a task commonly given to low-caste villagers in India, where the animals roam freely.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties in the parliament tried to corner the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue.
Leader of pposition and Congress member Ghulam Nabi Azad said: “Gau raksha honi chahiye, lekin uske naam par bahaana karke Dalit aur Musalmanon ko target karo, uske khilaaf hain hum. (Cow should be protected, but we are against the targeting of Dalits and Muslims in its name.”
“(The) BJP raises ‘Mahilaon ke samman mein, BJP maidan mein’ slogan, yet in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh women thrashed on beef rumors,” Mayawati said.
As she completed her submission, BSP members trooped into the Well of the House, shouting anti-government slogans. Congress members too joined them in the well.
Congress leader Anand Sharma asked why Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not spoken up about the attack on Dalits in name of cow protection. “He has done ‘chai-pe-charcha’ (talk over tea) and ‘mann-ki-baat’ (straight from the heart) but why not on this issue?”
BJP leader Mukhar Abbas Naqvi issued a clarification on the matter: “Violence in any state is condemnable, we don’t justify anything.”
“(We) want to restore an environment of belief and development in country. We should rise above politics on such issues, and the welfare of the society should be above our personal motives,” he added.
