Mohammed Akhlaq, 52, a resident of Bisara village in Gautam Budh Nagar, about 40km from the Indian capital, was attacked on Monday night.
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The family were allegedly attacked after an annoucement at a local temple that they were storing and consuming beef in their home.
In addition, Akhlaq’s 22-year-old son has been seriously injured and hospitalised in the same attack.
Police said they had arrested six suspects and were searching for at least four others. The temple’s priest and his aide were among those taken into custody. “The state government is neither taking action on its own nor letting the local police do the same…the main reason for this is they believe that they can survive only in such an atmosphere”, party supremo Mayawati said in Lucknow. Police is now investigating as to how the rumor spread. The arrested have been identified as Rupinder, Vivek, Sree Om, Sandeep, Saurabh and Gaurav, all in their late 20s. “We have also organised a meeting between both the groups in the village to maintain peace in the area”, he said. “However, investigations are still underway. Before the announcement was finished, they reached our house, accused us of keeping cow meat, broke down our doors and started beating my father and brother”.
“My father was taken outside the house and beaten to death”, Sajida said. “We don’t eat beef”, Akhlaq’s brother Jan Mohammad Saifi told journalists. A sample of the meat, found in the victim’s home, was also sent for forensic checks to determine if it was beef. “They announced our family had slaughtered a cow in the village and that provoked people to attack our home”, he added. One 20-year-old man was reportedly injured, the paper said, without elaborating. “A policeman fired a shot in the air but it hit Rahul on the side of his abdomen”.
Sajida said that the hostility in her town was new.
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Police on Wednesday blamed the incident and subsequent sectarian violence on tension fuelled by politicians who seek strict protection of the animals, which many Hindus consider sacred. The police did not search the area near the transformer where the cow was reportedly slaughtered.
