Muslim teen brutally killed in attack on train in India
The Washington Post
Onlookers on the train, Hashim said, refused to intervene as the mob closed in on the Muslim passengers. “Instead, they asked those men to finish us all,” he said.
Violence has surged since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government started restricting the sale of cattle for slaughter. The move was widely interpreted as an effort to stop people eating the meat of cows, considered sacred by Hindus. It enraged Muslims, who often sacrifice cows on Eid-al-Fitr to mark the end of a period of austerity and fasting during Ramadan.
Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is known to have close ideological ties with a far-right organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which has long advocated for banning the
DELHI, India - Sixteenyear-old Junaid had just earned the esteemed title of “hafiz,” given to Muslims who memorize the entire Koran. Junaid would need a new suit for the festivities, so his parents sent him to the Indian capital, New Delhi, with his brothers, and 1500 rupees ($23) in his pocket.
Junaid would never wear the suit. Nor will he have the honor of reciting the Koran in the mosque ever again.
The teenager was brutally killed Thursday evening by a mob on his way home from the city. They slashed his ribs and stabbed him in the chest and then threw him off the train. They called him “mullah,” mocking his religion. They accused him of being a beefeater, an anti-national, a Pakistani.
A video shows Junaid being cradled by his brother at the platform of a train station just after the attack; a crowd of people looking on. Junaid’s brothers told NDTV that the attackers threw their skullcaps to the floor and pulled their beards.
“He was a child. He was just 16. How could they hate us so much to have killed him so brutally?” Junaid’s father, Jallaluddin, told the Hindustan Times. “When I reached the spot, my son Hashim was sitting on the station with Junaid’s body soaked in blood in his lap,” he said.
Hashim, Junaid’s brother, said the teenager was pinned to the ground by three men as others stabbed him. “Three men held me when I tried to intervene and stabbed me thrice in the back and shoulder. One of us even tried to pull the chain to stop the train, but it was not working,” he told the Hindustan Times. sale of beef in India. Such efforts during Mr. Modi’s reign have pitted beef-eating Muslims and low caste dalits against the Hindu majority and invigorated young vigilante Hindu bands, who launch attacks on anyone theysuspect as a beefeater.
Tensions between the majority Hindus and Muslims have remained high since the fallof the British Raj in 1947.
For Junaid’s family, the tensions struck home. His mother, Saira, only learned about her son’s death on the day of his funeral. “I got to know only when his body returned home this morning,” she said Friday. “When he did not reach home last night, I kept asking his father about his whereabouts but no one answered me. ... No one ever told me that he was no more. How could they hide it from me?”she said.