Sitting on charpoys in the fairly big courtyard of their modest house, 14 members of Pehlu Khan’s family discuss their next meal in hushed voices. The pouring rain and the eight-hour- long power cut have added to the grim atmosphere at the house.
The family patriarch was lynched by a mob of ‘cow vigilantes’ at Behror in Alwar district of Rajasthan three months ago on April 1. He died of serious injuries on the chest and lower abdomen after the attack.
On June 22, 15-year- old Junaid Khan was fatally stabbed on the Delhi-Mathura local train while returning home to Khandawli village in Ballabgarh after Id shopping in Delhi.
Like most people in the village, Pehlu’s family too heard about it after a WhatsApp photograph made its way to Jaisinghpur village in Haryana’s Nuh. It showed the teenager lying in a pool of blood on the platform. Beneath the gruesome photograph was a detailed message in Hindi describing what had happened to Junaid and how he was killed by a mob because he was ‘obviously’ a Muslim. Most people in the village received the news
of Junaid’s killing via Facebook and WhatsApp before television and newspapers reported the incident.
‘What is happening?’
“ Hamare abba ko to isliye mara kyunki unke pas gai thi. Gai taskar samajh liya unhe. Iss bechare ne kya kia tha? Isko kyun mara? Ye kya ho raha hai ? [My father was killed because he had cows. They thought he was a cow smuggler. Why did they kill this poor boy? What did he do? What is happening?” said Pehlu’s 25-year- old son Irshad, as his brothers Arif and Mubarik nodded in agreement.
Sitting at a tea stall outside the village was Nijru Khan, a villager who knew all about the Junaid case. Nijru expressed concern about the future of Muslims in the country.
Recalling what happened to his friend Pehlu and Junaid, he said, “Anyone on the road can abuse and harass us today. We are poor and we are Muslims — the biggest bane in the country today. They catch the ones with a beard and a lungi. Even if we get buffaloes, they will believe we are transporting cows and beat us.”
An auto-driver who ferries people around Gurugram metro stations was also sitting at the tea stall. He alleged having seen two boys abuse a Muslim man wearing a skullcap near one of the metro stations.
Not an isolated case
“They forced him to remove his skullcap. Two police officers intervened and slapped the boys. They made them apologise to the victim and the matter was resolved,” he recalled.
Back at Pehlu’s home, his mother Anguri Begum, who can no longer see or hear, kept lying on a cot throughout this exchange. Oblivious to the world around her, she only got up after a request by the photographer. The family claims she is now mentally challenged.
Incidents of lynching and mob violence
- September 2015 : Mohammad Akhlaq (45) lynched in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, over rumours that his family had been storing and consuming beef at home
- October 2015 : Zahid Rasool Bhatt (16) died in a petrol bomb attack on his truck in Udhampur, Jammu & Kashmir
- February 2016 : Muslim cops thrashed and forced to chant ‘Jai Bhawani’ in Latur, Maharashtra
- March 2016 : Suspected cattle traders Mohd. Majloom (35) and Inayatullah Khan (12) found hanging in Latehar, Jharkhand
- July 2016 : Two Muslim women beaten up in a train in Madhya Pradesh for allegedly carrying beef
- April 2017 : Suspected cattle traders Abu Hanifa (23) and Riazuddin Ali (24) killed for allegedly stealing cattle in Assam
- April 2017 : Pehlu Khan (55) died of injuries after being attacked in Alwar, Rajasthan
- May 2017 : Munna Ansari (39) attacked in Jharkhand following rumours that he was a ‘child lifter’
- May 2017 : Sheikh Sajju (25), Sheikh Siraj (26), Naim (35) and Sheikh Halim (28) lynched in Rajnagar, Jharkhand, over kidnapping rumours
- May 2017 : Two meat traders thrashed in Malegaon, Maharashtra, for allegedly storing beef
- June 2017 : Ainul Ansari (35) attacked in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, on suspicion he was taking beef to an iftaar gathering
- June 2017 : Tamil Nadu Animal Husbandry Department officials transporting cattle in trucks attacked at Barmer, Rajasthan
- June 2017 : Junaid Khan (15) stabbed to death by a mob in a train on the eve of Id in Ballabgarh. He was called a ‘beef eater’
- June 2017 : Alimuddin Ansari lynched in Jharkhand on suspicion of carrying beef
In mourning
“She was okay till about a month after the incident. Eventually, she lost her mental ability to understand anything. Sometimes she wears her slippers on the hands. She wakes up in the middle of the night shouting ‘Pehlu…Pehlu’. She doesn’t eat for three days at a stretch. We have to force her to eat. Sometimes she starts taking off her clothes,” said Pehlu’s daughter-in- law Shabnam, as tears trickled down her cheeks.
Shabnam, and her sisters-in- law Nazma and Jafreena have been holding down the fort since April 1 as their mother-in- law and Pehlu’s wife, 45-year-old Zebuna, has been observing iddat .
As part of the mourning ritual of four months and 10 days, Zebuna has been confined to a room where she reads the Quran all day. She cooks occasionally.
‘How do I stop crying?’
“She is not supposed to talk to any man except her sons… Not even eye contact is allowed. She is not permitted to step out of the house either. This makes it difficult to divert her mind. But this is our culture and we respect it,” said Shabnam, caressing her mother-in- law’s head and requesting her to stop crying.
As the reporter sat next to Zebuna in the small dark room, she cried and sang a song of mourning remembering her husband.
Unable to speak much, she said, “How should I stop crying? I remember him in the mornings when he used to leave for work and in the evenings when he would return home. Why was he killed? Chauda baar maara tha unko [He had 14 injuries on the body],” she wailed.
Trying to make ends meet
Irshad said the family has been struggling to make ends meet since his father’s death. The family, which is essentially into dairy farming and cattle trade, has suffered immense losses in the past three months due to “fear”.
“The last time we attempted to get cows and buffaloes in the village was on April 1 — the day my father was attacked. After that, neither my family nor anyone else from the village has attempted to get cattle. We all are obviously scared that they’ll stop us and beat us,” he said.
The family said Pehlu was getting cattle due to an increase in the sale of milk during Ramzan. “People have curd during seheri and are forced to buy milk at higher prices in order to fulfil that ritual. This time, we used the milk for the family’s consumption only,” said Irshad.
Seeking prompt action
Talking about Ramzan, the family alleged there were no blackouts during the holy month when “the Congress was in power. Now that the BJP is in power, there is no electricity for nearly 20 hours each day”.
Stating that his brothers and he are not very educated, Irshad said they were heavily dependent on their father as all of them were still learning the ropes. On whether he has plans to work with a transport company outside the village, Irshad said, “Who will take care of the family and Abba’s case?”
Stating that he wished the police had acted as promptly in his father’s case as in the case of Junaid’s murder, Irshad alleged that the six main accused “will never be arrested because they have political connections”.
Little progress in case
Meanwhile, the case seems to have made little progress as no new arrests have been made. Behror Deputy Superintendent of Police Parmar Singh said the case has been transferred to the CID Crime Branch in Jaipur.
Admitting that the six main accused mentioned in the FIR had not been arrested, he said, “Seven arrests were made in the case. The file was first transferred to the Additional Superintendent of Police at Kotputli in Rajasthan from Behror police station, and later to CID Crime Branch for probe.”
Incomes dwindling
On the current scenario in the village, Irshad’s younger brother Mubarik added, “We all keep cows and buffaloes to meet our daily milk needs. If at all anyone has to buy or sell, the transaction takes place within the village as we all have cattle... When someone dares to buy new buffaloes, they do so from nearby villages. We don’t head to the highway to transport cattle anymore.”
Sharing his sense of fear is 70-year- old dairy owner Hasandeen, who lives a km away from Irshad’s residence. Looking at his four cows and four buffaloes, he said, “This is all I have”.
The family, he said, used to earn anything between ₹20,000 and ₹25,000 but now the income has dwindled to about ₹6,000 a month. “Sometimes, we get buffaloes from other villages but not cows,” said his son Mohd. Hashim.
While Jaisinghpur village is predominantly inhabited by Muslims, 30-odd Hindu families live here peacefully. While some Hindu families refused to talk, a couple living next to village sarpanch’s residence spoke a little.
“We live together happily,” said Indra Devi.
The other side
On whether they had participated in protests that followed, her husband Om Prakash said, “No, we didn’t. We don’t have anything to do with that. We are Hindus.”
Seeming slightly hesitant, they shared an incident they claimed took place seven years ago. “Our son committed suicide after he had a fight in the village. Woh akela pad gaya tha [He was alone],” they said.
Three of their five children live in Delhi. Two others are married and live in nearby villages.
Refusing to get into the details, they added, “We have to live here for the next three years…We don’t want to discuss this anymore.”
