Ranchi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his two-day visit to Gujarat on Thursday said that the killing of people by cow vigilantes is unacceptable.
Speaking at the Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat, he said “Killing people in the name of Gau Bhakti (cow worship/protection) is not acceptable. No person in this nation has the right to take the law in his or her own hands in this country”.
This is a day after people across the country protested against mob attacks.
In a Facebook post, Gurgaon-based filmmaker Saba Dewan called out to the public conscience. “Why can’t all of us as citizens repulsed by the violence get together in protest at the earliest next week at Jantar Mantar under the banner – Not in my Name,” she wrote in the post.
The #NotInMyName protest is a demonstration scheduled in Delhi and several other cities across the country on June 28, yesterday (Wednesday) by citizens against incidents of lynching of Muslims and Dalits.
This comes after the killing of 16-year-old Junaid Khan who was stabbed to death in Ballabhgarh, Haryana by a mob for wearing a skull cap and called him a beef eater after an argument. Two of his brothers were injured in the incident. Junaid was traveling home to his village in Haryana with his brother and two cousins after a shopping excursion to Delhi ahead of Eid.
The PM has been targeted by critics for not condemning the growing attacks by self-declared cow vigilantes, or ‘gau rakshaks’, many of them in states governed by his party, the BJP. In one of them, a 55-year-old named Pehlu Khan, from Rajasthan, was lynched in April for transporting cows for his dairy farm after his assaulters accused him of smuggling the cows illegally. He died of his wounds.
Although the protest was originally planned to be held just at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, the idea has attracted a great deal of response nation-wide.
