By IndiaTomorrow.net
Kanpur/New Delhi, 2 Oct 2015: Attacks against the marginal seem to have touched a new high over the past week in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Close on the heels of the 28 September mob lynching of 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri near India’s capital Delhi, a 90-year-old Dalit man died after he had been brutally attacked with an axe and set ablaze for allegedly trying to enter a temple at Hamirpur in Uttar Pradesh, the police said on Friday.
The victim, identified as Chimma, had gone to the Maidani Baba temple along with his wife, son Durjan and brother on 30 September evening. As the family approached to enter the temple, they were stopped by a man called Sanjay Tiwari.
Tiwari attacked Chimma with an axe and set him on fire as the latter refused to stop entering the temple. According to media reports, the accused earlier had threatened Dalits against entering the temple on several occasions. The entire episode took place in front of a number of devotees in Bilgaon, a village bordering Hamirpur and Jalaun districts of UP, located 140 km from Kanpur, where a Muslim man was lynched by a mob on 27 September on suspicion of being a Pakistani terrorist.
Tiwari was, however, soon captured by the people and handed over to the police. He was allegedly in an abbreviated state when he attacked Chimma.
In another incident on 28 September night, which left the entire nation shocked, 50-year-old Akhlaq was beaten to death and his 22-year-old son severely injured in Dadri near Delhi, allegedly by the residents of Bisara village, after rumours spread in the area about the family storing and consuming beef. The attack on Akhlaq and his family took place at around 10 PM following an announcement about the family consuming beef reportedly made from a local temple. While Akhlaq died, his son Mohammed Danis is still battling for life after two complicated brain surgeries.
With three cases of violence of intolerance within a week wherein people were brutally lynched, the Indian conscience is shaken amid raging protests by its conscious citizens.
Incidentally, while it was a mob violence that killed Mohammad Akhlaq, the positive side is that it was the common people again – who nabbed the killer of the Dalit man and handed him over to the cops.
