Yes, let’s ask the same question: Why would you kill a Muslim?

“Are Muslims not human?”“Are they not our brothers?”“Why would you kill a Muslim?”These are some of the questions being asked by Uma and Siyanand Mishra, parents of teenager Aryan Mishra, who was shot dead by alleged cow ‘protectors’ after a 30km chase in Haryana’s Faridabad.The post-midnight murder, not far from the national capital, is the sharpest wake-up call against the long-inherent dangers of states providing sanction to so-called vigilantes who have killed scores on mere suspicion.For far too long, self-styled vigilante groups have been guilty of murdering those they suspect of either consuming beef or smuggling cattle. medium113362902The mob has been running amok since 2015. That year, Bisada, a populous village in Uttar Pradesh’s Dadri, hit the headlines after Mohammad Akhlaq, one of its residents, was brutally beaten to death on the mere suspicion that his family had slaughtered a cow and stored beef in its refrigerator.The murder was shocking for other reasons. All the 18 accused were neighbours, who a few days earlier had enjoyed the Akhlaq family’s generosity and shared a meal with them on the occasion of Eid.That night, however, when the family was preparing to retire for the night, an angry mob barged into their home, beat Akhlaq to death and used a sewing machine to smash his son’s head. The son survived after several surgeries and is now a witness in the court trial that is on a slow-burner, despite being in a ‘fast-track court’.There have been other innumerable cases.Akhlaq’s murder was the first testimony to the danger of self-appointed cow vigilantes. The subsequent murders, including of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan and then of Junaid and Nasir in Haryana last year, are troubling for the sheer sanction the ‘cowboys’ seem to enjoy from states ruled by the BJP in particular.It is only now, because the victim is a Brahmin, that there has been a wave of outrage. The senseless killing of Aryan has now triggered the questions of “Are Muslims not human?” and “Why would you kill a Muslim?” medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/aRMHHFJjTto?si=D16n2BnOIAelwLSkThese questions ought to have been asked many years ago. It is indeed ironic and tragic that a ‘mistaken identity’ has prompted questions that ought never to have been mouthed.The tragedy, however, is that the state patronage to the self-appointed vigilantes is akin to the liberty with which states have been using bulldozers to dispense a warped sense of ‘justice’ that has only now caught the attention of the Supreme Court. The apex court has, after years of misuse, articulated its unease over the use of bulldozers, opining in no uncertain terms that they cannot even be used against convicts.The overzealous ‘gau rakshaks’ too have become extensions of the law and order machinery, including in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where the Mishra family resides.Will the death of Aryan see the myriad cow protection groups being defanged? In Haryana, as we know, these vigilantes have special identity cards that give them a free run through toll plazas. They are encouraged to play the role of informers by the police and are nothing but non-state actors who have been given the pelf to further ideological narratives.Will any lessons be learnt from Aryan’s tragic killing? All he was doing was accompanying a family from a building in which he resided for a late-night snack. The outing turned fatal and the police informed Aryan’s father that his son had been killed by a vigilante, Anil Kaushik, who they had arrested. medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/i0AyxA3HiYQ?si=uqsxiTD9i96Hy889Siyanand Mishra found it hard to accept that his son had been killed by one of their own (a fellow Hindu). When Mishra asked to meet Kaushik, the alleged killer, Kaushik’s only remorse was that he had turned his firepower on a “brother”.That is the tragedy of this ‘New India’. Remorse is reserved not for the fact that an innocent has been killed but that he has been ‘mistakenly’ killed.This is the time, if ever such a wake-up call was needed, for the police to revisit the freedom they have extended to vigilantes who like to give chase to random vehicles in the middle of the night.It is they who need to face the full force of the law, for it is they who have been enabled and empowered. It is they who have been given the licence to kill.More often than not, victim families are the ones left grappling with cases. They are the ones who have to explain what meat they store in their refrigerator.It is tragic that Aryan was targeted. He is no less a victim than Mohammad Akhlaq or Pehlu Khan.Aryan’s grief-stricken mother can see her son’s loss for what it is and is asking the right questions. More of us need to ask the same: Are Muslims not our brothers? Why would you kill a Muslim?Read more from the author here.