NEW DELHI, June 29 (Xinhua) -- A Muslim man was beaten to death Thursday in India's eastern state of Jharkhand for allegedly transporting beef in his car, police said.
The lynching took place in the evening at Ramgarh district, 48 km north of Ranchi, the capital city of Jharkhand.
"A group of people stopped a car near Bajartand village and attacked driver brutally, besides setting his vehicle on fire," a police official said. "The man was attacked on rumors that he was carrying beef in his car."
Officials said police personnel reached the spot and rescued the victim identified as Alimuddin also known by the name Asgar Ansari, but he succumbed on the way to hospital.
"It's a premeditated murder," a senior police official R. K. Mullik told media. "We have identified 10 people involved in this attack."
The attack came hours after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the killing of people by cow vigilantes was unacceptable.
"Killing people in the name of Gau Bhakti (devotion towards cows) is not acceptable," Modi told a gathering in his home state Gujarat. "No person in this nation has the right to take the law in his or her own hands."
This is the second such attack in Jharkhand during the last three days.
On Tuesday in Giridih district, a Muslim dairy farmer was brutally assaulted and his house set ablaze after carcass of a cow was found near his door.
On Wednesday, thousands of people gathered in various Indian cities to protest the rising attacks on Muslims by Hindu vigilante cow protection groups. The protests named Not in My Name were staged in New Delhi, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Allahabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Trivandrum, Bengaluru and Mumbai, etc., besides London, Boston, Toronto and Karachi.
The protest campaign was organized by Saba Dewan, a Delhi-based documentary filmmaker following the last week's killing of a Muslim teenager on a moving train outside Delhi, the Indian capital city, over rumors that they (Muslims) eat beef.
The 16-year-old Junaid Khan was stabbed by a group of around 20 men on a train in the northern state of Haryana while he was returning home from Eid (Muslim festival) shopping in Delhi. Three others accompanying Khan were severely thrashed by the mob.
Majority of Hindus consider cow to be sacred, and its slaughtering is banned in most Indian states. To defend cows, groups under the patronage of rightwing Hindu organizations have come up in rural areas of India to protect them and stop sale of beef. The groups routinely check vehicles and often beat up cattle traders.
The vigilantism around cows, however, seems to have intensified since 2014, the year Bhartiya Janta Party ascended to power under the leadership of Modi.
Cow slaughtering is a sensitive issue in India and sometimes flares up communal passions.
Last year also Modi criticised the cow vigilantes, saying such people make him "angry."
However, his rebuke has neither stopped attacks against cattle traders nor mob lynching in the name of beef eating.
Reports said in the past two years, nearly a dozen people were killed in attacks from cow vigilantes. Ironically the attacks are carried out on unfounded rumors and targets are often the Muslims.
