Ujjain district members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal honoured police officers with garlands and sweets for parading two Muslim men accused of cow slaughter in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain. The Muslim men identified as Salim Mewati and Aaqib Mewati were brutally beaten and paraded through a busy area by the police on March 3 over accusations of cow slaughter.
A video that surfaced on Friday, March 7, across social media platforms shows the Hindutva members garlanding the senior police officers and then exchanging sweets amid laughter. After the celebration, the radical group members and the police officers clicked photos together.
The event has raised grave concerns over the relationship between law enforcement and radical ideological groups who are accused of serious crimes, including vigilante violence in the name of religious nationalism, gang rapes, lynching, assaults on interfaith couples, and attacks on places of worship.
Muslim men paraded with inflammatory chants
Several videos of the police beating Salim Mewati and Aaqib Mewati surfaced and went viral on social media platforms.
During the parade, the two men were forced to chant, “Gau hamari matha hai, police hamara baap hai”, which loosely translates to “Cow is our mother and police is our father.”
In one of the videos, a police officer is seen thrashing men with a long iron rod and asking the duo why they were paraded, to which the visibly terrified men replied that they were involved in the business of cow slaughtering.
The men were seen tied with thick ropes and struggling to walk, indicating how severely they had been beaten even before the parade. They were paraded for almost a kilometre, then taken to the police station.
Ujjain’s additional superintendent of police (ASP) Nitesh Bhargav stated in a video byte that the police received a tip-off about illegal cow slaughter in the Ghatiya area of Ujjain.
“Upon receiving the information, the police acted swiftly, seizing the culprit’s vehicle, mobile phones, and the cow meat. Two individuals were arrested, while a third suspect remains at large. Teams have been formed to apprehend the third accused,” he said.
ASP Bhargav further revealed that both arrested individuals, Salim and Aaqib, are repeat offenders. “Salim has 24 cases registered against him, while Aaqib has four,” he added.
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