Ghazanfar Abbas, IndiaTomorrow.net
New Delhi, July 3: Three days after the nationwide protest “Not In My Name” held against the incidents of mob lynching, Delhi on Sunday witnessed people’s another protest to strengthen the movement and it was joined by family members of some victims of mob lynching. They pledged to continue to fight against the mob lynching culture and hatred.
In the protest titled “Voice against Hate and Mob Lynching”, held at Jantar Mantar, hundreds of people came from Haryana – the BJP-ruled state which has witnessed a series of such incidents in the last four months.
Member of Rajya Sabha Ali Anwar Ansari, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s Secretary General Mohammad Salim Engineer, All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat president Navaid Hamid and advocate and social activist Ramzan Chaudhry along with family members of mob lynching victims Mohammad Akhlaq, Pahlu Khan and Junaid Khan joined the gathering with many students and social activists.
Navaid Hamid held BJP and RSS responsible for increase in killings of Muslims and Dalits by self-styled Gau Rakshaks (cow vigilantes).
Hamid said, “This is a fight between two ideologies. The ideology of hatred will be defeated. All the voices being raised here against the ideology of hatred will bring a revolution.”
Addressing the gathering social activist Nadeem Khan said, “The day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was giving statement on the killings by Gau Rakshaks, Alimuddin was being killed in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh district by self-styled Gau Rakshaks. Instead of instructing his ministers to act as per the Constitution of the country he was issuing mere statement. This government is patronizing all these Gau Rakshaks who are making a mockery of the Constitution.”
“We will go to each corner of the country to unmask those who in the name of cow are killing human. I believe the voices all of you have raised here will spread across the nation in the form of a revolution,” he said.
People protesting at Jantar mantar
In the last two years, around two dozen people, mostly Muslims, have been killed in mob lynching by self-styled Gau Rakshaks over an allegation of either beef consumption or cow smuggling in different parts of the country.
On June 29, Alimuddin alias Asgar Ansari was beaten to death near Bajartand village (Ramgarh District, Jharkhand)) for allegedly carrying beef. Just a few days before on Thursday (June 22), a 16-year-old student named Junaid Khan was beaten and then stabbed to death by a group of men in the Delhi-Mathura EMU local train near Palwal railway station in Haryana.
Earlier in June, Zafar Khan, 55, was allegedly lynched by staffers of Pratapgarh municipality in Rajasthan when he objected to them taking photos of women defecating in open.
In April in Rajasthan itself, dairy farmer Pahlu Khan was lynched by a brutal gang of Gau Rakshaks.
Mohammad Akhlaq, 55, was lynched by a similar mob in Dadri of Uttar Pradesh in 2015 for allegedly eating and storing beef.
Student leader and national president of NSUI Firoz Khan said, “This fight is between Indians and those who are against diversity of India.”
Sadaf Musharraf, sister of Najeeb Ahmad, a JNU student who mysteriously disappeared after a scuffle with some members of RSS student wing ABVP in October last year, also participated in the protest.
The students and social groups participated in the protest were INSAAF, Aman-e-Hind Youth Corps, Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS), Students Federation of India (SFI), and National Students Union of India (NSUI).
