'IN July 2016, in Una town of Junagadh district, two young Dalits who were skinning the carcasses of cows that they had been asked to collect were accused of killing the cows and beaten brutally. They were further humiliated by being tied to rickshaws and flogged. The public assault and the fact that self-declared gau rakshaks were on the rampage at the time ensured that the Una case received national attention, but cases such as the ones listed below remain largely unknown:
'The brother of the doctor accused in the Gorakhpur hospital tragedy last year was shot at three times on Sunday night. Gorakhpur is the constituency of Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Kashif Jameel, Khan’s 34-year-old brother, has survived the shooting and is in Star Hospital in Gorakhpur...'
'Vigilantism is flourishing in India, unabated. Mobile footage of civilians beating, kicking, flogging crime suspects, the weak and the vulnerable alike has now become a regular feature on television rundowns. The latest in the series of horrific lynch-attack videos have emerged from prime minister Narendra Modi's Gujarat. A man is bound by his waist with a rope looped through the handlebar of a door. Its other end is held by one of his four attackers. He howls in pain as two men take turns to whip him with a PVC stick.
'In what is turning out to be a major embarrassment for the Jammu and Kashmir government and the BJP, two serving state ministers were seen attending a rally organised in support of the accused in the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl from Kathua. Minister for forest Chaudhary Lal Singh and minister for commerce and industries Chander Prakash Ganga, both from BJP, attended the event organised by Hindu Ekta Manch, an outfit that has been protesting against the arrests in the case...'
'Cow vigilantism has reared its ugly head ever since Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014. From Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri to Majloom Ansari and Imtiyaz Khan in Latehar and most recently, Pehlu Khan in Alwar – several people have been killed by vigilantes in the name of cow protection. Though most of the victims have been Muslims, Dalits have also paid the price. The flogging of Dalit men in Una, Gujarat last year was also done in the name of cow protection. Cow vigilantes haven't even spared their own ideological cousins.
'Members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, allegedly physically assaulted some Delhi University students who were participating in a public meeting yesterday, October 27. Many student activists from different groups sustained minor injuries in the attack, which was allegedly led by Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) president Amit Tanwar.
'An attempt was made to strangle Kanhaiya Kumar on a Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to Pune on Sunday. This is the latest in a series of threats and attempted assaults on the JNU students’ union president... Kumar has received multiple threats ever since he was branded as “anti-national” by certain groups after an event in JNU on February 9. He was attacked by a group of lawyers when presented at Patiala House court on February 17, attacked and abused within the JNU campus by an outsider on March 10 and had slippers and shoes thrown at him in Nagpur on April 14.
'Twenty-three years after it was banned following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the Bajrang Dal on December 6 this year renewed its pledge for a Ram temple at the mosque site. The anniversary of the demolition is technically a day of “valour” (Shaurya Diwas) for the Hindutva outfit. This year, however, Shaurya Diwas wasn’t subdued as in many past years. There were elaborate press releases and there was heightened activity on right-wing Twitter handles in support of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya.
'Forensic analysis of bullet cartridges found at the scene of murder of Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi in Dharwad in August this year and comparison with cartridges recovered from the spots where communist leader Govind Pansare was killed in Kolhapur earlier this year, and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in 2013, has provided evidence of the probable involvement of a common set of killers.
'Shaista, daughter of Mohammad Akhlaq, who was lynched by a violen mob in Dadri village over rumours of eating beef in September, on Wednesday named six more people as being part of the mob. Local police officials are investigating their involvement in the case. According to sources in the local police, the six persons are close to Sanjay Rana, the local BJP leader, whose son Vishal and nephew Shivam are accused of creating the rumours and gathering the mob which lynched Akhlaq...'
