By Teams
This article is a collaboration with Alt News, a non-profit fact-checking website in India. Read the article on Alt News’ website here.
They describe themselves as “cow protectors” or “gau rakshaks” in Hindi. On social media, they often post about carrying out charitable work such as operating ambulances for sick or injured cows, feeding stray animals and distributing food to people.
But in the dark of the night, their work takes on a more violent edge. Multiple photos and videos show members of “cow protection” groups chasing, shooting at and beating up truck drivers they claim are “smuggling” cows for slaughter.
Cows are considered sacred in Hinduism, the dominant religion in India. Many states in the country prohibit the slaughter of cows and have strict laws on the transportation, sale and purchase of cattle. These laws have become more stringent since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power in 2014.
The vigilantes attacking truck drivers tend to be closely aligned with hardline Hindu nationalist organisations, and a majority of their victims are Muslims. And while they claim to be doing this for the sake of the cows, in some of the videos the animals can also be seen injured from vehicles overturning during aggressive chases.
Elaine Pearson, Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, told Bellingcat that cow protection has become part of the political agenda of leaders of the BJP and in some cases they have backed the alleged actions of the suspects “while the police have failed to take action against them”.
Bellingcat and our partners at the Indian outlet Alt News found videos on social media showing violent assaults by members of five self-described animal welfare groups, mainly operating in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana where incidents involving cow-related violence have frequently been reported.
(Editor’s note: We are not sharing links to these videos to avoid amplifying content depicting violent attacks seemingly targeting minority groups. However, if you are a journalist or researcher interested in obtaining this dataset, please email [email protected].)
This story was originally published in bellingcat.com. Read the full story here.
