Return of Beef Politics: BJP plays its communal card in Uttar Pradesh (just ahead of UP Elections)

by Guest Sat Jul 16, 2016 1:08 am

The wheels of justice have turned with great alacrity in Dadri. On Thursday, a local court ordered the Greater Noida police to register a case against Mohammad Akhlaq, lynched last September for allegedly eating beef, and against six other members of his family. The case was to be registered under the Uttar Pradesh Cow Protection Act, 1955. The court was acting on a petition filed by Akhlaq’s neighbour in Bisada village and backed by those accused of murdering him.
Only consider this sequence of events. On September 28, loudspeakers at the local temple were allegedly used to announce that Akhlaq and his family had eaten beef. Later that night, a mob descended on the household, killing Akhlaq and severely injuring his son. As the event became the subject of a polarising political debate, it appeared that two sets of crimes were committed that night: cow slaughter and beef eating, rioting and murder.
The police rounded up and arrested 19 people accused in the lynching case. Of these, one person has been given a clean chit and two minors have been let off on bail, while 16 people still remain behind bars.
But the conversation soon shifted to whether beef had been consumed that night. The police took meat samples from Akhlaq’s fridge to get them tested. In May, a forensic lab report said the meat belong to a “cow or its progeny”. Even though the government said this would not affect the lynching case, the families of the accused demanded a mahapanchayat, which was duly held. At the meet, the clamour for action against the Akhlaq family grew louder.
Except, beef-eating is not a crime in Uttar Pradesh, cow slaughter is. Soon enough, neighbours reported that they had seen members of the Akhlaq family beating a calf and later slaughtering it. A petition was filed and admitted in the Surajpur court. The fury that moved mobs to kill that night in September has now been legitimised by a court ruling.
Within months, Mohammad Akhlaq has gone from being victim to accused. His family, harassed by neighbours and forced to leave Bisada now face charges under a law that essentially criminalises the food habits of the minority. The case against those charged with murder has barely inched forward...
At the national level, reactions from the BJP leadership ranged from denial to indifference to active support. Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma called it an “accident” and asked the media not to “give it a communal twist. The prime minister spoke obliquely about “plurality and tolerance” and then admitted that the incident was “sad” but what could the Centre do?
BJP leaders from UP rose in a chorus of support for the accused. The group headed by Yogi Adityanath, BJP member of Parliament from Gorakhpur, offered to arm the Hindu population of Dadri with guns. Sanjeev Balyan, BJP MP from Muzaffarnagar, Union minister of state for water resources and an accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013, advised the police to find out everyone who ate the cow and punish them. BJP MLA Sangeet Som and BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya also urged action against the Akhlaq family. “You cannot have privileges simply because you belong to a minority,” Vijayvargiya reportedly said.
http://scroll.in/article/811867/in-dadri-the-louder-political-voice-has-turned-the-victims-into-the-accused