A man identified as Salim was assaulted by a mob of cow vigilantes on the mere suspicion of carrying beef in Ghaziabad‘s Shastri Nagar. The incident came to light after a video surfaced on social media.
According to the post, the men who attacked Salim identified themselves as cow vigilantes. Police reportedly intervened at the scene, seized the meat for forensic testing, and took Salim into custody. An investigation has been initiated, the post said.
There has been no official statement from Ghaziabad police confirming the status of the forensic report at the time of publication.
The incident adds to a long running pattern of cow vigilante attacks targeting Muslims across India. Research cited by Reuters found that most of the recorded cow related attacks since 2010 took place after 2014, coinciding with the BJP’s rise to power at the centre. Rights groups have documented dozens of deaths in such attacks over the past decade, with victims disproportionately drawn from Muslim and Dalit communities involved in the cattle trade.
Just last August, Sabir Malik, a migrant labourer from West Bengal, was lynched in Haryana’s Charkhi Dadri over similar suspicions of beef consumption. Around the same period, an elderly Muslim man travelling by train was assaulted by a group of men who accused him of carrying beef, in an incident that was also captured on video and widely circulated online.
Researchers tracking political violence in India have found that cow vigilantism has been a significant driver of attacks by Hindu groups on Muslim civilians in recent years, with such attacks frequently linked to informal cow protection groups operating with little legal consequence.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more details emerge.
