Dadri lynching: Instead of getting a closure, Akhlaq's family victimised again

A Greater Noida magistrate court’s order directing the UP police to lodge an FIR against the family of Mohammed Akhlaq for alleged cow slaughter is the unkindest cut of all. Dadri-resident Akhlaq was murdered and his son brutally assaulted by a mob that accused them of consuming beef setting off local unrest against the arrest of the culprits and national and international condemnation against the creeping intolerance in Indian society. For the grieving family, the registering of a criminal case against them is tantamount to victimising them, a second time over. Booked under the Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act, 1955, the six members of the family  named in the FIR could face up to seven years imprisonment. The complainant had approached the court stating that the police were not willing to book the family despite two eye-witnesses claiming they saw Akhlaq and his son Danish beating a calf, and a third eyewitness alleging that they saw Akhlaq and his brother Jaan Mohammed slit the animal’s throat.

The court did not make any observations regarding the merit of the complaint or the conduct of the police but merely asked the police to investigate the alleged offence against Akhlaq and his kin. The police had already told the court that it did not have prima facie evidence to name the family as an accused because the samples of meat were not recovered from Akhlaq’s home, but from the street outside. Earlier, a Mathura forensic lab report had pointed out that this meat sample was beef. A better course of action would have been for the court to direct that an FIR be lodged against unknown persons, so that the investigation could proceed in an open-ended manner. It is interesting to note that despite the aggressive stance of the majority community, which threatened to convene a mahapanchayat, the police did not think a case was made out until the court intervened. Akhlaq’s family has claimed that the matter was being pursued to pressure the family to refrain from testifying against the accused in Akhlaq’s murder. That the slaying of a calf has led to the intervention of the court and the lodging of an FIR is not without its share of ironies. A man lost his life because of something he was eating within the four walls of his house and the police probe may now turn in the direction of incriminating him and his family for their eating habits and thus inviting the wrath of their neighbours.

Cow vigilantism, which caught public attention after the incident, has now become a sort of a nationwide phenomenon with cattle transporters, alleged smugglers, and cow hide extractors being subjected to violence, humiliation and ever murder in Jharkhand, Jammu, Gurgaon and Gujarat. At the Kerala House in Delhi, a canteen was raided in search of beef. The UP Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act is part of the statute and it can be argued that Akhlaq’s family allegedly committed an illegal act and the court was only enforcing the rule of law and directing the police to proceed in that direction. If so, the question that arises is whether this law is being followed by its most eager proponents and violators are being handed over to the police for trial in courts of law? Most of these states where cow vigilantism took place, the vigilantes took the law into their hands and summarily punished the offenders. The Bisara village’s claim that Akhlaq’s attackers reacted emotionally and hence should not be accused of murder is the worst excuse for murder. It was neither committed in self-defence by an individual or at the spur of the moment. The so-called witness statements indicate that some time elapsed between the alleged attack on the calf and the mob action at Akhlaq’s house. The Dadri lynching was an attack on individual and family rights with communal implications. That it refuses to die out and has set off a narrative of counter-victimisation is an unfortunate development.