My husband was killed because he was Muslim, says Alwar lynching victim’s wife

The wife of Alwar lynching victim Asmeena with their youngest daughter Sahila

The sole breadwinner of a family of nine, Rakbar Khan was allegedly killed in Alwar on suspicion of cow smuggling.

Mewat: The killers could have beaten him up and broken his bones, but why did they take his life, asked the widow of Rakbar Khan, the 28-year-old who was allegedly killed by villagers in the Alwar district of Rajasthan Friday on suspicion of cow smuggling.

“He was killed because he’s a Muslim, Modi is getting Muslims killed… They could’ve sent him to jail, beaten him up, at least they should have spared his life,” Asmeena said looking visibly shocked. Her tearless eyes suggested she hadn’t quite come to terms with her husband’s abrupt, cold-blooded murder, until she broke down into inconsolable screams minutes later.

Days after the Supreme Court asked the legislature to consider enacting a new law to deal with mob violence, Khan was allegedly beaten to death by villagers who accused him of cow smuggling in the Ramgarh town of Alwar district.

A couple of months ago, Khan, the sole breadwinner in the family of nine with daily earnings of Rs 300-400, had injured his foot which prevented him from working on the field, she said. “So he told me he’ll get two more cows so that the family could make ends meet by selling their milk,” she added. They already had four cows previously.

“What do I do with my kids now?” she asked helplessly. Khan has left behind seven children, the youngest of whom is only 3 years old.

“They should at least give a government job,” she said. So far, only the Haryana Waqf Board has come forward and offered the family a compensation of Rs 3 lakh.

‘Not the work of gau rakshaks’ 

Villagers in Khan’s native Mewat district in Haryana say extortion and manhandling in the name of cow protection is a routine affair in the area. Khan was coming back from Ramgarh after purchasing two cows, along with his friend Aslam, who survived by escaping from the scene.

“A lot of people who buy cows for dairy purposes are extorted and beaten…this is not the work of gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes), but people who just want to extort money,” said Umar Mohammad, Khan’s relative.

“In Alwar, they all have the patronage of Gyan Dev. He gets all this done, and the police helps them,” he added.

Gyan Dev Ahuja is the local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA in Alwar.

“This man was a criminal. He used to buy cows for slaughter and sell cow meat, there is a criminal case against him,” Ahuja told ThePrint even before condemning his murder. “If he was actually taking the cows for dairy purposes, why was he doing it surreptitiously at 12 in the night through a kuchha road?”

‘Muslims have nowhere to go’

The role of the local police has come under serious scrutiny after they failed to come up with any reasonable justification for the 3-hour delay in bringing Khan’s body to the hospital.

The superintendent of police in Alwar has assured that action will be taken against the local cops if they are found guilty.

The villagers, however, speak of 55-year-old Pehlu Khan who too was beaten to death by suspected cow vigilantes while he was transporting cattle last year. “Did the police do anything that time? No,” said Mohammad Ansar, a resident of Khol Gaon, to which Rakbar belonged. “These incidents have just kept going up ever since BJP came to power,” he said.

“Muslims have nowhere to go… Instead of investigating the murders, police takes action against us,” he said.

Subhash Sharma, in-charge of the Ramgarh police station under whose jurisdiction the incident took place, had nothing to say about the criminal antecedents of the accused but insisted that the deceased had a criminal case related to cow smuggling against him.