India Tomorrow
Bhopal, May 25— On the eve of the Lok Sabha election results, when BJP was busy in preparation for victory celebration as all the exit polls had predict landslide victory for the saffron party, a group of party supports – self-styled cow vigilantes in Seoni of Madhya Pradesh – decided to give a ‘special’ salute to the victory. They rounded a Muslim couple and their Hindu friend for allegedly carrying beef and mercilessly thrashed them. As such brutal gangs of self-styled cow vigilantes have been doing, they recorded their ‘heroic’ act on mobile camera and uploaded on social media.
Story did not end there. At the call of the attackers, police came and ‘obediently’ arrested the Muslim couple and their friend.
After a video went viral on the social media in which five people are seen beating two persons for allegedly carrying beef in the Seoni district, the police on Saturday arrested and jailed the five.
In the video, posted on the social media by the main accused Shubham Baghel on Friday, the cow vigilantes with saffron gamchha (towels) around their necks are beating two persons with sticks.
The cow vigilantes — Baghel, Yogesh Uike, Dileep Namdev, Rohit Yadav and Shyam Lal — had assaulted the Muslim couple identified as Tausif Khan and Shama Ansari and their Hindu friend Dilip Malviya.
After the incident, the police on Wednesday had arrested the three for allegedly carrying 140 kg beef in an auto-rickshaw and booked them under the Madhya Pradesh Agricultural Cattle Preservation Act.
Police arrested the cow vigilantes only after the video went viral.
According to India Today, the victims have alleged they were forced to chant ‘Jai Shree Ram’.
In the video, it is seen that the cow vigilantes forced one of the two males to hit the woman with slippers.
It is important to note here that since the campaign for Lok Sabha elections began two months ago, no such incident had occurred in any part of the country.
In the five years of the BJP government at the centre (2014-2019), dozens of people were killed by mobs over rumors related to cow smuggling, cow slaughter or beef consumption.
— With Inputs From IANS
