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Two ‘cattle thieves’ beaten to death in West Bengal
The victims, both of whom were in their 30s, were identified as Prakash Das, a resident of Mathabhanga town, and Rabiul Islam of Oklabari in Dinhata.
Two suspected cattle thieves died in a hospital in West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district on Thursday after being assaulted by a mob.
The victims, both of whom were in their 30s, were identified as Prakash Das, a resident of Mathabhanga town, and Rabiul Islam of Oklabari in Dinhata. The lynching took place at Fuleshwari in the Kotwali police station area of Cooch Behar.
“We have initiated an investigation. We have found that the two were beaten up when some local people suspected that they were stealing cows. They were carrying cows in a pickup van that did not have a licence plate. People chased the vehicle and caught them. Thirteen people have been arrested for the lynching,” said Santosh Nimbalkar, superintendent of police, Cooch Behar. “While probing the background of the two men, we found that they were cattle lifters.”.
Local people confronted the two men and started questioning them, said an officer of the local police station on condition of anonymity.
“When the men failed to give any satisfactory answer, the crowd pounced on them,” the officer said.
Police from the Tapurhat police outpost came to know of the incident and reachedo the spot. They took Das and Islam to the Cooch Behar Medical College and Hospital, where they died.
Mob lynchings of individuals, many suspected to be cattle thieves, triggered the Supreme Court’s concern last year, prompting the apex court to spell out a 11-point prescription, including steps to tackle hate speech, provocative statements and fake news, usually the precursor to attacks by mobs. The Supreme Court asked Parliament to come up with an anti-lynching law to tackle cow vigilantism and lynch mobs
Three states have brought specific laws to deal with mob lynchings. Manipur was the first to bring a law that prescribed the death sentence for lynchings in January 2019. The Rajasthan and West Bengal governments used the Manipur law as template.
In West Bengal, tens of thousands of cattle are estimated to be smuggled to Bangladesh every year through the porous 2,216-km India-Bangladesh border in the state. In July, the Border Security Force seized 261 cattle in just three days of a particular week while the animals were being smuggled through the Padma river.
