Bisara, India (CNN)By
and large, Hindus and Muslims live side-by-side in relative peace
across India. But every now and then, the calm is punctured by moments
of madness — and deadly violence. The sleepy, dusty, mostly Hindu
village of Bisara, near the country's capital, became such a place this
week.
According to eyewitness
accounts, this blood-curdling sequence of events unfolded in a matter of
minutes Monday night: A Hindu temple announced sacrilege; villagers
formed an angry mob; and normal people, fueled by each other's presence,
became assailants.
A Muslim
blacksmith, Mohammad Akhlaq, and his son Danish were battered by people
who knew them. The father died, and his son was has been hospitalized
with critical injuries.
What triggered
the bloody assault? A rumor that a cow was slaughtered in that
nondescript neighborhood, home to mostly Rajputs — a high-ranking
valiant Hindu caste meaning "sons of the kings."
In Hinduism, cows are deemed sacred and their killing a sin.
'It was blood all over my son's face. He is gone'
"Two
young men came to me that night and asked me to announce on the
loudspeaker that there's a carcass of a cow lying nearby," the temple
priest, Sukhdas Mahatma, told CNN.
"They
pressured me to make that announcement. What could I do? I had to make
that announcement," he said, moving his fingers on his flowing white
beard.
Asghari Begum sits broken and bruised after Monday's mob attack.
Soon
after his broadcast, villagers crowded around the temple compound, and
decided to set out for Akhlaq's home through the winding, narrow and
broken lanes. They believed the 50-year-old blacksmith was the culprit
because his faith doesn't prohibit eating beef. And his was one of the
two Muslim households in that neighborhood of more than 6,000 people.
"I
heard loud bangs on the front door of our house," said Asghari Begum,
the mother of Mohammad Akhlaq. "Then I heard them shouting expletives,"
she said. Before she could react, a group of men scaled the walls and
jumped into the house.
The victim's brother, Jameel Ahmed, grieves and demands justice.
"They pushed me, then punched me on my face, in the abdomen," Begum said, pointing to her bruised and swollen eye.
The
mob then ran to the first floor of Akhlaq's home and dragged him out,
along with 22-year-old Danish. Both were beaten with "whatever they
(attackers) could lay their hands on," police superintendent Kiran
Sivakumar told CNN.
"It was blood all over my son's face. He is gone," moaned Begum, sitting on a cot in her dark, ground-floor room.
Six arrested
Upstairs,
the telltale signs of the raid were still everywhere. A refrigerator
that stored meat lay down broken on the floor. The ransacked rooms were
still strewn with shattered vases and sewing machines.
A corner of Akhlaq's ransacked room is pictured.
Police
have so far arrested six of the 10 men Akhlaq's family has named in
their initial police complaint. These were people they knew. More
arrests are likely, Sivakumar said.
Unease
was palpable in the village as the murder drew widespread media
attention. No one in the village admits to being part of the mob.
"My
son is innocent. He has been falsely implicated," said Ombir Sisodia,
father of one of the jailed men. "He was sick and sleeping when mobs
gathered around after the temple announcement," Sisodia said.
Police
have seized meat samples from Akhlaq's home for testing. The family
says the meat is goat and not beef. Regardless of what kind of meat it
is, "it doesn't absolve (the attackers of) the crime," police
superintendent Sivakumar said.
Sacredness of cows
Cow slaughter is banned in most of Hindu-majority India, including in Uttar Pradesh.
This year, the western state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai, became one of the latest to outlaw beef.
"The
sacredness of cows in India might be a cliché, but it is deeply felt,
rooted in the history of Hinduism," said novelist Manil Suri in a New York Times column.
But
"imposing ideals from a mythic past is not the answer," he wrote in the
April op-ed. "The true lesson to take away from history is how
utilitarian goals can shape religious custom. Hinduism has always been a
pragmatic religion; what today's India needs is accommodation."
Rishabh Pratap and Roshni Majumdar contributed to this report.
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