THE Prime Minister maintains his record of “opportunistic silence” while his warriors wreck havoc on constitutional guarantees and legal frameworks. The horrific incident of lynching of a 50-year-old Muslim man and assault on his 21-year-old son in Bishada village following rumours that the family had killed a calf and eaten beef is the bloody harvest being reaped from the seeds of hatred sown by the Sangh Parivar on the issue of cow slaughter. In his bid to become Prime Minister and polarise Uttar Pradesh on communal lines, Narendra Modi during his campaign before the Lok Sabha elections had made provocative speeches in Western UP about the "pink revolution", the bizarre description he uses for cow slaughter. It is no coincidence that the violence happened when panchayat elections in UP are to be held shortly and when the Bihar assembly elections campaign has already begun.

The shame for every citizen is that the framework being set by those in power is that murder through lynching is justified if it can be shown that the victim “hurt religious sentiments”. The killing is a dreadful symbol of the wider plan. Through the falsification of history, religious sentiment can be invoked to justify violence in the cause of building of a temple, it can be invoked to save the honour of Hindu women from the so-called ‘love jihadis’ or as in Bishada to defend lynching to save the “holy cow”. Where is this country headed when a piece of meat has to be sent for forensic test to prove that it is not beef, so as to “assuage” religious sentiment of people. Cow may indeed be a sacred object of worship for a large number of Hindus. Equally it is a source of cheap protein to many communities also Hindu, as also a preferred food choice for Christian communities and people living in the north east. The perverted logic used by BJP leaders in the present case means that anyone is fair game for those whose job is to protect “religious sentiment”, a sentiment which is largely manufactured by them in the first place.

Thus, the (uncultured) Union Minister of State for Culture Mahesh Sharma has defended the horrific killing, calling it an “accident”. According to him, it was sudden “excitement” caused by the news of cow slaughter. Sanjeev Baliyan, an accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots case who was rewarded by Modi with a berth in his council of ministers, defended the killing and demanded the resignation of the UP Chief Minister for “failure to stop cow slaughter”, while the state vice-president of the BJP, Srichand Sharma, went further and demanded that a case be filed against the victims for killing a cow, despite knowing well that the meat recovered from the victim's house was found to be that of goat.

Any Prime Minister with an iota of respect for the law would have asked them to resign. On the contrary, there is a concerted effort by the RSS-BJP to defend the criminals. It is not surprising that the first group arrested includes sons of BJP leaders, one of whom has been identified as having made the announcement in the temple that a cow had been slaughtered. The announcement was only the public declaration of the intent to kill. The plan was underway in the campaign being run not only in this village, but across the country, by Hindutva forces targeting Muslims on the issue of cow slaughter. Just three months earlier, very close to this village, three Muslims who were ferrying cattle for sale were stopped and lynched. Little known organisations have sprung up, all working to the same RSS agenda. It is no coincidence that just before Eid, in four districts of Jharkhand, meat was thrown into temples which immediately led to riots and attacks against Muslims.

The failure of the UP government to track and take action against organisations spreading hatred is glaring. The police and intelligence agencies claim they had no idea of the campaign. It is known that sections of the police and bureaucrats are working with the Sangh Parivar. Even after the horrendous Muzaffarnagar violence against Muslims, the Samajwadi government in UP has displayed criminal negligence against the activities of RSS-led organisations spreading hatred. It has much to answer for.

Such was the background, when a CPI(M) delegation went to the village to express solidarity with the family. In the delegation were Brinda Karat, Delhi state secretary K M Tewari, state secretariat members Nathu Prasad and Sehba Farooqui, Noida district committee secretary Gangeswar Prasad and other leaders.

A big gate with an imposing statue of a warrior riding a horse, on the lines of Maharana Pratap, marks the entrance to the village of Bisahda in Dadri tehsil of Gautam Budh Nagar district, just 50 km from Delhi, a symbol perhaps to remind the visitors of the strong Thakur presence in the village. It is a large village with a population, according to the 2011 census, of 6,669 people. It is in this village that a horrific transformation, wrought by hate speech and hate filled propaganda against Muslims, occurred.  A village, with around 25 Muslim families, which had never witnessed a single incident of communal tension in decades, became the site of the most brutal man slaughter on the night of September 28.

When our delegation reached the village two days after the murder, doors were shut, shops were locked and there were hardly any people on the road except for armed policemen and the SDM of the area. We were taken through congested lanes to a corner house, where Md. Akhlaq lived with his family -- his mother Asghari Begum, wife Ikraman, son Danish and daughter Shaista. His elder son Sartaj is employed as a technician in the Air Force and is posted in Chennai. A married daughter lives not too far away, in Modi Nagar. It was a closely knit family.

Akhlaq's brother J M Safi, who lives in nearby Dadri, told us, “We are ordinary people, we live by working hard, my brother was an ironsmith, providing services to farmers in the village. My brother's wife and daughter stitch clothes to make an income.” The family believes in education, he says. Shaista has passed Class 10, her brother Danish, now critically ill with head injuries lying in the ICU in a nearby hospital, was about to complete his diploma course in an ITI. The village itself has a literacy rate of 77 per cent, higher than the state average by around ten percentage points. So it was not lack of education that can be blamed for the horrific crime, the criminals in the mob in all likelihood were all educated men.

Inside a dimly lit inner room, we met the women; Akhlaq's wife sits on the floor, trying hard to deal with her grief. She narrates those dreadful events. After dinner her husband, her children and she had gone up to the upper storey when they heard the loud shouting of a mob. They had absolutely no idea or any inkling that they were the targets. Seventy-year-old Asghari Begum who was downstairs heard banging on the front door. Before she could answer, the door was broken and simultaneously men climbed over a side wall leading straight into the small courtyard. She tried to hide herself in the bathroom but was dragged out, attacked, abused, beaten. She was hit on the face and the injury marks include a big bruise in and around her right eye and bite marks on her chest. She kept crying: “What have we done, what is our crime”. Other men rushed, shouting filthy abuse. The rest is a blur. She says, “I tried to save him… I begged, I pleaded, I cried out loud.”

Akhlaq's wife says: “They pushed me, sexually abused me, filthy language, their dirty hands on my body, I bit one of them hard and only then did he remove his hand… What they did to him, to my husband, they took the bricks on which the bed stood and started pounding my husband on the head. They used my sewing machine as a weapon to beat them.” She breaks down.

Every single item in the room was broken. The refrigerator, in which the meat received during Eid celebrations, was kept in a small vessel, was smashed. In fact, this Eid the family did not perform ‘qurbani’. They have not done so for several years. Their elder daughter had sent them the meat. The announcement made from the temple was an out and out lie, but what is worse is that most in the mob knew it was a lie. In the room, chairs and table are broken. The sewing machine, an instrument for their livelihood, became the weapon of slaughter. It lies damaged in the corner. Safi shows us where Akhlaq was beaten. His post-mortem report, now available, says he died of severe head injuries and loss of blood. The large bloodstain on the floor and the wall speak to the silence in the room as Safi points to the marks.

The daughter, the youngest of the siblings, just a teenager, articulate, even in her terrible grief, speaks of her determination to get justice. “We want justice,” she says, “We cannot stay here for a single day more. They can repeat this horror to keep us silent. The scenes keep playing in my head. My brother, I want him safe here by my side. Together we will get justice.” Her brother Danish suffered head injuries. He is in the ICU. Later when we visited the hospital, the doctors informed us that he was better after two surgeries, but still critical.

For the women, besides the unutterable grief, the unexpectedness of the attack was surprising. The signs of changes among some in the village were apparent too. Ikraman says that the week before Eid, Danish had bought a ‘pathani suit’ and wore it proudly to his college. But when he came back that day he was very upset and said that some boys of the village had taunted him, saying he looked like a Pakistani and that he was trying to act too smart. She says that such comments were unusual but they ignored it, without thinking that these were indications of what was happening in the hitherto communally peaceful village.

BJP leaders in the village have met under the leadership of Mahesh Sharma in the same temple to assure the accused of support. The minister openly declared he would ensure justice to the youth "wrongly arrested”. After this meeting, a group of women, led by the wife of a BJP elected panchayat ward member, abused the media and drove them out, and stopped others who wanted to meet the family from entering the village.

The family requires support. They are also firm about moving out of the village. They know that many in the village are unhappy and condemn what happened. Even among the community which the arrested belong to, there are sections that do not support them. Dalits constitute around 11 per cent of the village. Their voices have not been heard. But the girl, her mother and grandmother are the main witnesses at present. They feel the pressure of the families of the accused every time the police come to record a statement or an arrest is made. The UP government has to make the necessary arrangements.

The Noida district committee of the Party is bringing out thousands of leaflets for a public campaign to fight back the Sangh Parivar's toxic politics, particularly in the adjoining areas where the working class of Noida reside. (END)