Latehar to Ramgarh to Godda: Jharkhand moves from one lynching to another

In the killing of Sirajuddin Ansari and Murtaza Ansari at the hands of a mob in Jharkhand's Godda district, the wave of bigotry that has taken over the state since 2016 has once again raised its head.

Memories of the murder and hanging of Mohammad Majloom and Inayatullah Khan in Latehar in 2016 were still fresh, when Alimuddin Ansari was lynched in Ramgarh in 2017. The Godda killings just a year later have once again highlighted the credentials of the state as a hotbed of violence in the name of the cow.

Police have claimed that the Ansari duo were a part of gang of five who had stolen buffaloes, were caught by villagers and beaten to death. Two FIRs have been filed, one for murder and rioting against the accused and another for theft against the dead victims.

Police have arrested four of those accused of murder and are also on the look-out for others suspected to be part of the mob. There is no way to predict at this point of time which way will this case go. While the state government showed remarkable agility in solving the 2017 case and bringing the guilty to book, the 2016 case is languishing miserably.

The Godda case is being presented as a case of spontaneous reaction and not an outcome of the sinister cow-protection movement that claimed lives in the other cases. However, as Catch pointed out earlier, Jharkhand has seen a lot of activity connected to cow-protection campaign since 2014.

These included mushrooming of cow-protection outfits, vigilante action against cattle traders and increased activity of gau-katha vachaks (preachers who tell stories about the significance of the cow).

The outfits and their members have been linked to the Sangh Parivar and have even been convicted in at least one of the cases. BJP district media cell in-charge Nityanand Mahato was convicted in the Ramgarh case and the alleged mastermind in the Latehar case was suspected to be a Bajrang Dal member .

In the Godda case, no links with BJP, RSS or any of its off-shoots have been found so far, but local BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has left little to imagination. In a clear endorsement of the criminal conduct of the accused, Dubey has announced that he will bear the legal expenses of the four accused.

Dubey reportedly expressed indignation at the fact that though the entire village was involved in the lynching, only these four had been “singled out”. The absence of remorse for the crime and for the lives it claimed was telling.

CM Das continues to be silent on the incident, just like he has been tight-lipped over the last three years through all the multiple incidents of violence across the state. Of all the states where the multiple incidents of such killings have taken place (Mohammad Akhlaq in Uttar Pradesh in 2015 and Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan in 2017), Das's responsibility is the biggest because his state is turning out to be a repeat offender, year after year.

Till when can he afford to maintain this silence?