Charkhi Dadri, Haryana: “I still feel my husband has gone out for some work and will return soon. I cannot accept that he is gone forever. What was his crime?”
That was Shakina Sardar Malik, 23, whose 26-year-old husband Sabir Malik, was allegedly lynched on 27 August 2024 by a mob of Hindu men who falsely accused him of eating beef.
For the past five years, Malik, a waste picker, lived with his wife, their two-and-a-half-year-old girl, and their parents in a shanty in Charkhi Dadri, a district in southern Haryana. Like the other two migrant families from West Bengal who came looking for work and settled in Badhra tehsil, they lived in shanties made of bamboo sticks and plastic sheets, earning Rs 500 per day as waste pickers.
After Malik’s death, all three families returned to their village in South 24 Parganas, a district in the southern part of West Bengal.
“We went there for a better life, but that place snatched my husband. I felt scared for my daughter,” Shakina Malik said, speaking over the phone from her village on 8 September. “That’s why I returned.”
A first information report (FIR) was registered at the Badhra police station on 28 August 2024 under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections 103(1) (punishment for murder), 115 (voluntarily causing hurt), 140(1) (kidnapping to murder), 190 (unlawful assembly), 191(3) (rioting), and 61 (criminal conspiracy).
In his complaint, Malik’s brother-in-law, Sujaudden Sardar, said “some men” came on 27 August and accused the waste pickers of eating beef on Tuesdays, a day Hindus considered to be holy, started questioning them and took them to the police station.
The complaint said that when they were at the police station, “some men” went to Sabir Malik and told him that they had to sell some scrap and asked him to come to the bus stand where they killed him.
Malik’s body was found in Bhandwa village, 4.6 km away from Badhra tehsil.
Under the Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act, passed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in 2015, slaughter, smuggling, trafficking, and consumption and sale of beef are prohibited. However, there is no prohibition on the consumption of buffalo meat in Haryana.
The waste pickers told Article 14 they cook buffalo meat.
Sardar, a 22-year-old labourer, told Article 14 that the men who came to take them away to the police station called them Bangladeshis.
“Just because we are from Bengal, it is easy to label us Bangladeshis,” he said, speaking over the phone. “We went there for work. How would you feel if you came to Bengal and we treated you like an outsider?”
In addition to caring for his family, Sardar now cares for his sister and her daughter.
Anti-Muslim Violence Continues
In Haryana, the network of cow vigilantes that attack Muslims they suspect of transporting or eating beef came about after the BJP came into power at the Centre in 2014. They have become more active in the ten years in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has governed India after winning three general elections.
In the same week that Sabir was killed, cow vigilantes chased 19-year-old Aryan Mishra for 30 km in Faridabad and shot him dead, mistaking him for a Muslim cow smuggler. He was returning to his home with his friends after eating noodles.
On 27 August 2024, before Sabir Malik was lynched, Article 14 found that the mob of Hindu men raided the shanties of the Muslim waste pickers from West Bengal and Assam at two locations in Charkhi Dadri district, and violently searched their homes for hidden beef.
In Hansawas Khurd village, where the migrant workers from Assam lived, 38-year-old Asir Uddin was thrashed and his 14-year-old son was tortured and burnt with a cigarette. Unable to go out to work due to fear of being attacked by cow vigilantes, eight migrant families have returned to their home states.
At a press conference on 31 August, when Haryana’s chief minister Nayab Singh Saini was asked about this mob lynching, Saini refused to call it a case of mob lynching and, in a way, also justified this crime.
“Villagers have so much respect for cows that if they are informed about such things, then who can stop them?” he said. “I want to say that such incidents should not happen, and these incidents are unfortunate.”
On 7 September 2024, Narendra Kumar, the head constable at the office of Charkhi Dadri’s superintendent of police, Pooja Vashishth, told Article 14 that 12 people had been arrested in connection with the murder.
When asked about the around 40 people who raided the shanties, Kumar said, “Investigation is still ongoing.”
How It Began
A visit to Charkhi Dadri revealed that the story of Malik’s lynching did not start in Badhra tehsil but seven kilometres away in the Jat village of Hansawas Khurd.
A day before Malik was killed, on 26 August, a man came to the shanties of migrant waste pickers in Hansawas Khurd and demanded they show their identity cards.
“He didn’t tell us who he was. He said we are Bangladeshis, and hence, he wants to confirm our identity,” said Shakina Khatoon, 22.
“We thought he was from the government and genuinely wanted to confirm our identity, so we showed him our Aadhaar cards,” said Khatoon. “He was really aggressive. When we asked him questions, he threatened us. We were scared, and we followed his instructions.”
Five Muslim families from Barpeta district in eastern Assam have lived in these shanties on a patch of land they have rented for Rs 2,000 monthly for the past three months.
“We don’t have any land back in our village. We don’t have any job opportunities. We would have starved to death if we had not come here,” Zahirul Islam, 24, said. “One of the villagers moved to Hansawas Khurd and found waste picking work and motivated others to come as well.”
‘They Were Stepping On My Face’
On 27 August, most of the waste pickers in Hansawas Khurd were out for work when about 35 to 40 men raided their shanties at around ten or eleven in the morning, recalled Asir Uddin, 26, who was at home with his wife Marzina Khatoon, 22, and their two girls.
“They held me by my collar, took me out and before I could understand anything, and started beating me,” said Asir Uddin. “They were stepping on my face with their shoes and abusing my religion. They were continuously saying that we have eaten beef.”
“Two days ago, Sabir bhai arranged buffalo meat for us, and we cooked it. Some of it was still kept in our home,” he said. “I kept explaining to them that it was buffalo meat, but they said I am a Muslim and I cannot be trusted.”
Asar Uddin said the man who came a day earlier to check their identity cards was leading the mob.
Marzina Khatoon had to plead before them to spare her husband.
“I touched my nose to their feet, begged them to stop beating my husband. But they didn't stop. When villagers called the police, they stopped," said Marzina.
"They went into our room and started searching through our things. They threw our belongings outside in this process and started opening all the utensils and boxes. They kept asking where the cow meat was," she said, “I told them there wasn’t any, but they said, ‘You can't be trusted,' and opened the lid and checked my utensils. They also threw the cooked dal on the floor.”
Mazrina said she called her sister, Nazrina Khatoon, who also lived in Hansawas Khurd and was out picking up waste.
Nazrina said she arrived and found the men searching her room.
“I asked, ‘What are you doing?’ They said you people eat our cows. They checked every utensil and spilt some of the rice on the floor because they were in a hurry,” said Nazrina. “I felt like a criminal being searched by the police.”
Saqib Islam, 20, said one of the men held him against the wall with a stick and asked him where the cow meat was kept.
“He said, ‘Why do you people keep offending us by eating our cows? If you want to live here, you have to stop this.’” Immediately after this, they went into my room and removed our beds and all our stuff and threw them outside,” said Islam.
After searching all the five shanties for 30 minutes, they found a cooker with meat in his house and brought it outside, said Asir Uddin.
The police arrived and took Asir Uddin and the meat to the Badhra police station.
“Nothing happened at the police station. The police just asked me what we cooked. I told them it was buffalo meat,” said Asir Uddin.
‘They Have Traumatised My Child’
Another man, 38, who was also called Asir Uddin, said that he and his 14-year-old son, Rokibul, were taken in a car by the Hindu men to a farm in Badhra, where he saw Malik.
“Then they started beating us with bamboo sticks,” said Asir Uddin. “Sabir was killed right in front of me. I cannot get that out of my head. His face keeps appearing in my head.”
Asir Uddin, who suffered injuries in his legs, hands and chest, said he had spent Rs 10,000 for his treatment till now.
Sujaudden Sardar’s complaint said that Asir Uddin was beaten.
Asir Uddin said the cow vigilantes thrashed his 14-year-old son and burnt his body with cigarettes.
This, however, was not mentioned in the complaint.
Asir Uddin shared a photo with Article 14 in which burn marks are visible on Rokibul’s shoulder.
“I informed the police about this the next day (28 August) and requested them to take action,” Asir Uddin said.
When asked if there was an FIR related to Rokibul’s torture since the first FIR did not mention this, Charkhi Dadri’s superintendent of police, Pooja Vashishth, said, “No, there is no FIR. The investigation is going on under the same FIR.”
“This physical injury might be treated but they have traumatised my child. He will remember this all his life. He was screaming for help when they were burning my child’s body with a cigarette,” said Asir Uddin, a father of four.
“They said he is a kid but also a cow eater. I am filled with so much anger when I recall that. No father can tolerate this being done to his son,” he said.
Rokibul told Article 14 that he didn’t want to speak.
Asir Uddin said the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has yet to contact them.
The NCPCR did not respond to Article 14’s calls.
‘Killing A Human Is The Greatest Crime’
When Article 14 visited Hansawas Khurd on 7 September, ten days after the lynching on 27 August, there was a Haryana police vehicle next to the five shanties.
Amrut Lal, a 60-year-old farmer, who rented the land where the migrants lived, said, “These people should not have cooked meat on Tuesday. It is against our beliefs. They should have respected that.”
Lal also said that cow vigilantes were criminals.
“Cooking meat did create an issue, but it was not that big an issue that you will kill someone,” said Lal. “Killing a human is the greatest crime, and these cow vigilantes are goons.”
The migrant waste pickets believe that a scrap dealer passed on the information about meat being cooked to the cow vigilantes after they started working with another dealer.
When Article 14 visited, the waste pickers were too scared to go out for work even though rations were running out.
“We all are hungry and starving,” said Shakina Khatoon, cooking rice and chutney made from two tomatoes.
“We will not work since most of the men who came that day are still roaming about. We are scared. What if they target us again?”
“If the situation persists,” she said. “We might go back to our village in Assam.”
In a phone conversation on 18 September, Zahirul Islam, who used to live in Hansawas Khurd, said that the five migrant families returned to their homes in Barpeta, Assam, on 12 September.
“The situation was not improving. We would have died of hunger if we had stayed there," Islam said. "It feels like we will have to start our lives again.”
(Kaushik Raj is a journalist and poet based in Delhi. Srishti Jaswal is an award-winning journalist based in Delhi.)
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