Soft on cow vigilantes

Those following the Pehlu Khan case may not be surprised by the Rajasthan Police’s clean chit to the six accused persons named in the victim’s dying declaration. The six suspects belong to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and it is a BJP government in Rajasthan. Despite their whereabouts known to the police, the accused were not arrested. Almost every media report has described Pehlu Khan and his four associates as dairy farmers from Haryana who were attacked on April 1 this year while returning home with cattle purchased at a fair in Jaipur. Before his death, Pehlu Khan had named some of the attackers. Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria, however, described Pehlu Khan and his companions as “cow smugglers”, that too in the Assembly. That revealed the government's mindset. 

Biased investigations, deliberate delay and reluctance in arresting the guilty pricked the conscience of 23 retired IAS officers, who wrote to the Chief Minister that “a reprehensible attempt on the part of certain people in authority in Rajasthan as well as in the Union government to deny this horrific incident or to minimise its gravity have made them complicit in the crime with their inaction and silence”. Thus the fate of the case was known in advance. Killings of Muslims in the name of cow provoked a protest, “Not In My Name”, in cities across the country.

Public pressure had its impact. On the eve of Parliament’s monsoon session Prime Minister Modi asked all states to act against cow vigilantes. Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje cannot afford to go against Modi’s explicit instructions. No BJP CM can do that. The Rajasthan Government’s “defiance”, therefore, is open to interpretations. The Raje government is also guilty of taking lightly the Supreme Court’s recent directions to the Centre and the states to rein in cow vigilantes by “ensuring they don’t terrorise highways and sought the appointment of a senior police officer as a nodal officer in each district to coordinate measures against the self-styled gau rakshaks. If the culprits in the Pehlu Khan case go unpunished, something that cannot be ruled out, it would send a wrong signal about the country’s justice system.