Muslims, Christians frequent targets of religiously motivated killings in India: US Report

WASHINGTON: There were reports of hundreds of religiously motivated killings, assaults, riots, restrictions on the right to practice religion and proselytize in India in 2017, a US report said on Tuesday, with Muslims and Christians the most frequent targets of religiously motivated violence.

The 2017 International Religious Freedom Report was unveiled at a briefing by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It documents across 200 countries and territories, reports of violations and abuses committed by governments, terrorist groups and individuals.

There were several violent incidents by so-called “cow protection” groups against mostly Muslim victims, including killings, mob violence, assaults, and intimidation. Authorities often failed to prosecute those committing the attacks.

Religiously motivated violence resulted in 44 deaths and 892 injuries, according to the MHA 2016-17 Annual Report as cited by the US report. These fatalities were caused because of 296 conflicts between religious communities.

“Authorities often did not prosecute violence by vigilantes against persons, mostly Muslims, suspected of slaughtering or illegally transporting cows or trading in or consuming beef,” the report said.

Citing members of civil society and religious minorities, the report said that under the current government led by Prime Minister Nagendra Modi, religious minority communities felt more vulnerable to Hindu nationalist groups engaging in violence against non-Hindu individuals and places of worship.

According to media data project IndiaSpend, 63 incidents of cow-linked violence occurred between 2010 and June 2017, leading to 28 deaths. Ninety-seven percent of those incidents occurred between 2014 and 2017, and 86 percent of those killed were Muslim.

There were 11 deaths related to “cow vigilantes” during the year, the highest toll since 2010, when IndiaSpend began collecting data.

Citing some of the incidents, the report said that in June last year, assailants on a train in Haryana accused 16-year-old Junaid Khan of being a “beefeater,” fatally stabbed him, and threw him off the train.

In April, Hindus beat a Muslim man to death for carrying cattle in the back of a truck. Hindus threatened and assaulted Muslims and Christians and destroyed their property. In December a Hindu man posted an online video of his hacking, burning, and killing a Muslim laborer over religious differences.

According to media, in June, the Gujarat High Court granted bail to a Hindu nationalist leader, Atul Vaidya, who was one of 24 convicted in the 2002 anti-Muslim “Gulberg Society” killings of 69 persons in Gujrat when Mr. Modi was the chief minister of the state. This incident was one of 10 mass killings in 2002 in Gujarat.

In September the Rajasthan High Court granted bail to five of the seven individuals arrested for killing Pehlu Khan, a Muslim dairy farmer from Haryana, on the basis of a video of the attack gone viral. Khan was killed in April by a group of 200 so-called “cow vigilantes”.

In June last year, during Ramadan, a mob demolished a mosque under construction in New Delhi. Two days later a mob assaulted and handed over to police Basit Malik, a Kashmiri Muslim freelance journalist who had gone to the neighborhood to investigate the demolition.