An Indian court on Wednesday acquitted six men of the killing of a 55-year-old Muslim dairy farmer, citing lack of evidence, raising questions over the prosecution’s failure to make its case despite videos of a crowd beating him in the street.The judiciary is also highly terrified at the hands of Hindu extremists being patronised by ruling Nirendra Modi's party
The 2017 attack on Pehlu Khan and his two sons in the western state of Rajasthan by a suspected mob of cow vigilantes caused public outrage and demands for swift action.
Videos shot on mobile phones showed Khan begging for mercy as the crowd set upon him after stopping his truck with cows in the back. He died but his sons survived.
In Hindu-majority India, many consider cows sacred and killing the animal is outlawed in most states.
The 2017 attack on Pehlu Khan and his two sons in the western state of Rajasthan by a suspected mob of cow vigilantes caused public outrage and demands for swift action.
Videos shot on mobile phones showed Khan begging for mercy as the crowd set upon him after stopping his truck with cows in the back. He died but his sons survived.
In Hindu-majority India, many consider cows sacred and killing the animal is outlawed in most states.
An Indian court Wednesday acquitted six people accused of murdering a Muslim man who was attacked while transporting cows, which Hindus revere.
Pehlu Khan, a 55-year-old farmer, died after around 200 vigilantes attacked trucks carrying cattle on a highway in the western state of Rajasthan in April 2017.
Nine people were accused of killing Khan, with six of them acquitted by a local court in Rajasthan on Wednesday.
The three other accused are minors and are being tried in a juvenile court, Indian media reported.
Police told AFP then that the arrests were made after examining video footage shot by onlookers and eventually broadcast by media.
The verdict comes two months after New Delhi rejected a US State Department report which said religious violence against minorities had spiked under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi´s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
Cow slaughter is illegal in many Indian states and vigilante squads that roam highways checking livestock trucks for animals being transported across state borders have proliferated since the BJP came to power in 2014.
Rajasthan is among the states that ban cow slaughter, and authorities also require anyone transporting the animals across state borders to have a licence.
Some prominent Indians took to Twitter to vent their anger over the acquittal.
“Utterly Shameful! This is a lynching that was caught on camera!!! We live in a state of utter anarchy it seems.. the law, the constitution, even evidence it seems are meaningless. Dark dark times!! #PehluKhan,” said Swara Bhasker, an activist and a film actor.
Shama Mohamed, a spokeswoman for India's opposition Congress party, branded the court decision "a gross travesty of justice".
India's Muslim minority engages in the trade of cattle for slaughter and consumption, chiefly of buffalo meat, as well as dairy purposes.
