Three days after her eldest brother, Noman was lynched, allegedly by Bajrang Dal activists in Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh, Khushnuma is yet to come to terms with her loss.
The question she is asking every visitor is how could someone be killed for buying bullocks.
“I had fought with him when he was here. I didn’t know that he was not going come back,” Ms. Khushnuma cries inconsolably.
Before leaving on Sunday, Noman had told his parents that he would be back on Thursday.
But on Tuesday, he was lynched by a mob led allegedly by Bajrang Dal workers outside Shimla.
Saeed Akhtar, Noman’s father, told The Hindu that when he got a call informing him about his son’s death, he thought it was a prank. The reason for disbelief, he said, “We never had an occasion to be embarrassed in public on account of him. He was not a criminal but a boy who turned 20 a few months ago.”
“I am heartbroken. I lost my young son because some goons who wanted to protect cows killed him,” said Akhtar. “Being the eldest son, he was the hope of my old age. He was growing to become a handsome young man, but I can’t forget the number of injuries his body had when I received it,” he said while highlighting that Noman’s mother suffered a breakdown when she saw the injuries.
“Will they bring my son back if it is proved to them that there was no cow slaughter?” asked Akhtar.
“He was not slaughtering cows. He had accompanied youngsters from the village who had gone to buy bullocks,” said Akhtar. He had stopped looking for work since Noman, a high school dropout, started working.
The village head, Laiyque Ahmad Khan, said that Noman had gone to Punjab with a few others from the village to buy bullocks from the wholesale market in Punjab.
The village head clarified there was no FIR against Noman for cow slaughter. They had the letters of purchase from the local mandi.
Mixed reaction The killing evoked mixed reactions from villagers with Muslims expressing a sense of outrage over Noman's killing. Hindus, though, seemed concerned at the “increasing number” of incidents of cattle smuggling in general, but were also vocal in their opposition to Noman’s lynching.
“How can you kill somebody like this? Cow cannot possibly be the reason for killing a human,” said Ram Sundar, a street vendor near Akhtar’s house.
Khan, the village head, talked about the “tremendous amount of anger and resentment among local Muslims.” “Muslims in the vicinity see it as another Dadri because like Akhlaq, Noman was also lynched because of suspicion about cow slaughter. In western U.P., police make lots of arrests in the name of cattle smuggling/stealing which is almost simultaneously linked with the extremely sensitive issue of cow slaughter. That is not the right thing to do,” the village head added.
