Two Muslim buffalo traders and a van driver were assaulted by a mob, allegedly made up of workers from Hindutva outfits, in Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district on the evening of 26 October. Videos that surfaced on social media show the men tied with ropes, dragged through a field and beaten with sticks. Police have since booked the traders themselves under animal cruelty provisions. The incident took place in Hardua village under the Hindoriya police station limits.
What happened
The traders, identified as Abid Qureshi and Hasan Qureshi, are local buffalo traders. Hasan told reporters that he was travelling with Abid and a third man, Hussain Khan, in a pickup vehicle, taking buffaloes to a cowshed in Sagar. A group of men stopped them near Hardua Kyolari, Hasan said, first by throwing a brick at the vehicle, as reported by Muslim Mirror.
The videos show the mob tying up the two traders, dragging them across a field and hitting them with sticks while several men stand around them. The traders also said they were made to speak on camera while being assaulted.
This report draws on reporting by Maktoob Media (Ghazala Ahmad), Siasat Daily, Muslim Mirror and The Observer Post.
“We kept saying the buffaloes were not stolen”
Speaking to reporters from the hospital, Abid said the traders had shown the mob purchase receipts to prove the buffaloes were not stolen. When the men would not listen, he said, the traders tried to run but were caught. They kept telling the attackers “that the buffaloes were not stolen,” he said, but were beaten badly. They felt some relief only when police arrived.
Hasan and Abid told reporters the attackers were associated with the Bajrang Dal. Police have not confirmed this, and the traders’ account is an allegation. Abid had visible injuries on his face and body, according to Maktoob.
The injured were first taken to a local health centre and then to a hospital in Damoh. According to Maktoob, two of the victims are being treated in Damoh and the third has been referred to Jabalpur for further treatment.
The police response
Additional Superintendent of Police Sujit Singh Bhadoria said that police would register a case after recording the injured men’s statements and were examining documents related to the purchase and transport of the buffaloes, according to Muslim Mirror. The traders said police intervention stopped the assault, but questioned why their complaint was registered late. Siasat reported on 28 October that no case had yet been registered because, according to police, no one had come forward to file a complaint.
By 30 October, Maktoob reported, police had registered two cases. One is against unidentified individuals over the assault. The other is against the traders, the van driver and the vehicle’s owner, under provisions related to animal cruelty, because the buffaloes were allegedly being transported in a small van in poor conditions. In the material reviewed, no arrests of the attackers have been reported, and the specific legal sections have not been published.
Victims booked, attackers unnamed
The sequence raises a question that police have not answered. The men who say they were beaten while carrying receipts are accused of an offence, while the people seen in the videos are, so far, described only as unidentified. Police have not said what evidence supports the animal cruelty case, who inspected the vehicle, or how the attackers will be identified when the videos appear to show many of them.
The pattern is not new. In the 2017 Alwar lynching of Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer attacked by an alleged cow vigilante mob, police later charged Khan’s two sons and his transporter under Rajasthan’s cow protection law, as Wikipedia’s account of the case records.
What remains unanswered
Police have not said whether the attackers will be identified from the videos, whether any arrests have been made, or what law the animal cruelty case rests on. Reports also differ on whether the third man, Hussain Khan, was injured or escaped. The traders have said the buffaloes were bought legally and were being taken to a registered cowshed. Whether the documents they produced will be examined as seriously as the complaint against them is a question the Damoh police have not yet addressed.
