Death of a man held for WhatsApp on beef raises serious questions
After lynching to death Mohammad Akhlaq of Dadri in September last year over "beef in the refrigerator", and the twin murder cum gang rape of a family in Mewat over "beef biryani", news of a Jharkhand youth beaten to death in police custody over a WhatsApp joke on beef has emerged.
Minhaj Ansari, a 22-year-old from Jamtara district in Jharkhand, was tortured so mercilessly in police custody that he breathed last on Sunday past at a hospital nearby. The very fact that he was arrested is astounding enough, but the custodial death is something that is not only barbaric to the core, but also a sign of the ominous times we are living in when being a Muslim is pretty much a life-threatening condition by itself.
After beef in the fridge and beef biryani policing proved fatal for many a Muslim in contemporary India, Ansari's death, emerging in national spotlight a day after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat warned that cow vigilantism would not only continue, but, in fact, "gather momentum", is one more rude jolt in the series of political electrocution that our minorities are routinely put through.
To the extent that a Muslim's death, gang-rape, murder are becoming disgustingly normalised, routinised and getting lost in the din of patriotic TV charades and headline grabbing stunts aimed at Hindu majority whose silent complicity in these murders, gang rapes, custodial tortures is assuming toxic proportions.
Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das doesn't have much to say about Ansari's custodial murder. The police and penal institution of the state, much like its southern counterpart in Chhattisgarh, is notorious for their sickening kill lists, parading ordinary tribals and minorities as Naxals and Maoist sympathisers, as the bloated belly of "false positives" festers within.
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| Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das. (Photo credit: PTI) |
Now, the scourge of cow vigilantism, that has already caused bloodshed, mass disgruntlement and agitation in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, has begun to show its menacing impact in Jharkhand, adding another layer of atrocity in an already much afflicted state.
A WhatsApp message is at the centre of Minhaj Ansari's heinous custodial killing. As per reports, police has said that a WhatsApp message with allegedly objectionable comments on beef was being circulated in Dighari village of Naryanpura, in Jamtara district of Jharkhand, on October 2. Ansari was arrested the following day.
While blaming the sub-inspector responsible for the arrest, or citing a (perhaps fake?) medical record that Ansari was suffering from encephalitis (how did he acquire that in such a short term?) is exactly what is expected from the Jharkhand officials and the ruling BJP government in the state, what would get ignored is the cycle of religious terrorism perpetrated in the name of the cow.
Will a mere Rs 2 lakh compensation suffice for the murder of Minhaj Ansari? How many more Akhlaqs, Mewat victims and Ansaris would this country need before it wakes up to this homegrown fanaticism of humiliating, subjugating and murdering its Muslims?