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Police in India are investigating whether a deadly protest over the alleged slaughter of a cow, an animal many Hindus consider sacred, was aimed at sparking religious tension during a Muslim gathering.
Monday's violence in the country's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which killed two people, brings back to the national spotlight a trend of cow vigilantism by hardline Hindu groups ahead of a general election due in less than six months.
Police have arrested four of 27 men named in a complaint after a police officer and a man were killed in the northern state's district of Bulandshahr as tens of thousands of Muslims gathered for a religious event.
Police would try to determine the age of the cow carcass, police official Anand Kumar said when asked if there had been a conspiracy to vitiate the atmosphere by using a dead cow brought in from elsewhere.
A senior policeman and another man were killed on Monday in violent protests over a dead cow, an animal sacred in Hindu culture, in India's Uttar Pradesh state, police said.A crowd angered over what they believed was the slaughter of the cow threw stones and torched vehicles outside a police station.The officer died when he was hit by stones and the other person was shot dead, senior police official Anand Kumar said in a televised news conference."Villagers complained after they found a dead cow, and took to the streets to protest. They blocked a road with a tractor and pelted stones," he said.So-called cow vigilantes have attacked and killed a number of Muslims involved in transporting cattle to slaughterhouses in recent years. However, the exact circumstances of Monday's protests were not clear.Kashmiri leader asks PM Modi to open Hindu temple route
Policeman and one other dead after violence over cow slaughter in north India
"If there was anything like that, then the details will come out," Kumar, the state's second highest police official, told a news conference. "There's an intelligence investigation and all these aspects will be looked into."
The Muslim religious event ended peacefully and the situation had returned to normal, Kumar added.
Police have yet to arrest the main suspect, who belongs to the hardline Hindu group Bajrang Dal, said Bholendra, a leader of the group, who goes by one name.
Only an investigation would reveal if members of the group were guilty, he added. "Every action has a reaction," he said, however, while adding that the group did not believe in unprovoked violence.
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has written to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to open a route for Kashmiri Hindus to the Sharada Peeth temple.Mufti’s letter comes days after Pakistan opened the Kartarpur Corridor to facilitate Sikhs pilgrims from India to visit Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan.“Wrote to PM Narendra Modi for opening of Sharda Peeth route for facilitating the Pandit community [in Kashmir]. I hope like Kartarpur, this too will be considered for better peace prosperity in the region,” Mufti tweeted after sending the letter.While inaugurating the Karatrpur corridor on Wednesday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was quoted as saying that his government “could consider other proposals including opening up travel for the Sharada Peeth in Kashmir.”The ancient temple of Sharada lies in Neelam Valley in Azad Kashmir, 160 km from the capital Muzaffarabad. The Line of Control (LoC), the de-facto border divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, has prevented the pilgrimage since the partition in 1947.The Save Sharada Committee, which has been campaigning to allow Kashmiri Pandit pilgrims to visit the temple, had petitioned the Indian government earlier and also written to the Pakistani PM to facilitate the pilgrimage.“We have a cross-LoC permit in force since 2007, but this is only for JK residents to meet their relatives. We want religious pilgrimage to be added to it so that we can visit Sharada,” Ravinder Pandita, head of the Committee told the media. “I hear, he [Imran Khan] has talked about it, and it has given us a lot of hope.”Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.Since they were partitioned in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir.Also, in Siachen glacier in northern Kashmir, Indian and Pakistani troops have fought intermittently since 1984. A cease-fire came into effect in 2003.Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.According to several human rights organizations, thousands of people have reportedly been killed in the conflict in the region since 1989.
Kashmiri leader asks PM Modi to open Hindu temple route
Last year, a Reuters investigation https://www.reuters.com/invest... showed that cow vigilantism flourished during the first three years of the term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, run by his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Bhola Singh, the BJP lawmaker from the district, told reporters the protests escalated because people were agitated over two recent incidents of cow slaughter.
The dead police officer, Subodh Kumar Singh, had helped lead an investigation into the 2015 murder by a Hindu mob of a Muslim man rumoured to have slaughtered a cow in a village that is about an hour's travel away by road from the district.
The family of the man, a blacksmith, denied the accusation that they secretly ate beef, which is banned in many Indian states including Uttar Pradesh, which is ruled by a Hindu priest from the BJP.
Police officer Kumar declined to say why Singh was transferred from the area and the murder case handed to another officer.