Kolgaon (Haryana): A group of Rabari nomads walk with their herds of Kankrej cattle, sheep and camels on the highway to Alwar, Rajasthan. They face a five-month trek back home to Gujarat, a route they have walked for centuries raising and trading in livestock.

"It (the Rabaris' cattle trade) is all legal," said a Rabari chieftain, asked whether he had encountered any gau rakshaks (cow protectors) - the cow vigilantes' preferred name for themselves - on the way. He eventually admits: "Everybody pays; to live you have to pay."

Rakbar Khan, a Muslim unlike the Hindu Rabaris, paid with his life on Friday night.

Rakbar's brother Ilyas said: "The Rabari may only have to pay money. They are Hindu. We Muslims are told we don't belong to India. For us, cattle-rearing has become a game of death. But we don't know any other occupation."

It is an open secret that the murderous vigilantes make money through extortion by deciding whom to let through.

Just off the highway where the Rabari chieftain was walking behind his high-horned bull on Monday, Rakbar's family and neighbours sat in huddles in their village, Kolgaon, listening to visiting politicians. The speeches, all of which were on India's secular tradition and "a fringe that wants to divide us", have not restored their faith in the law.

Every man in Kolgaon, where milk production is the main occupation, swears he will "never buy cows from Rajasthan again". Kolgaon, in Haryana's Nuh district, is just half a kilometre from the state's border with Rajasthan.

Rakbar, 28 according to the FIR but 31 according to his Aadhaar card, was beaten to death hours after Parliament had voted out a no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government.

He and a friend, Aslam, were herding two cows and two calves he had bought for Rs 60,000 from a villager in Khanpur in Alwar. They were accosted and dubbed cow smugglers at Lalwandi village, Alwar.

Aslam was able to escape into the cotton fields.

Three people have been arrested. An assistant sub-inspector has been suspended and four constables sent to the police lines for a three-hour delay in taking Rakbar to hospital where he was declared dead on arrival.

Nawal Kishore Sharma, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad activist from nearby Ramgarh in Alwar, informed the police at 12.41am, the FIR says. A vigilante had apparently rung and told Sharma about an alleged cow smuggler coming under attack.

The FIR says Sharma accompanied the cops to the spot and found Rakbar, who gave an account of the attack by vigilantes before falling unconscious. The outpatient register at Ramgarh's community health centre, says the police brought an unidentified man at 4am.

"His body was terribly mangled. All his limbs were broken in several places. His neck hung out of place. It seems like they had broken his neck," said Ilyas.

M. Iqbal Siddiqui of the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights, who is visiting the village, said: "If his neck was broken, he couldn't have spoken to the police. We are waiting for the post-mortem report. It seems the police are complicit in covering up the murder by gau rakshaks."

Sharma and his associates had on Sunday introduced journalists to several local people to try and establish that it was the police, and not cow vigilantes, who killed Rakbar. Sharma said that on reaching the spot, they had found Rakbar lying in a muddy field.

These purported eyewitnesses included Sharma's brother Dev Karan, a Lalwandi resident who had apparently washed the mud off Rakbar, and another villager who arranged a tempo to transport the two cows (the calves are missing) to a cow shelter. Its manager, Kapoor Jain, confirmed receiving two cows from Sharma and the police at 3.26am.

That was over half an hour before Rakbar had reached the health centre, 4km from the attack scene. The cow shelter is in Alwar town, 10km from the spot.

A tea seller named Lal Chand, whose stall is 3km from Lalwandi, said he had served four cups of tea to the police jeep. This was around 2-2.30am. Among those who appeared with Rakbar's body at the health centre were Dharmendra Yadav and Paramjeet Singh, currently in custody in connection with the murder.

Local MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja of the BJP, who has demanded a judicial probe, claims the gau rakshaks had "only slapped" Rakbar to find out whether he was smuggling cattle, and that the police killed him in custody.

Rajasthan's Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 1995, prohibits the transport of cattle across state boundaries without permission. Rakbar had been charged with violating the act in 2014, and Ilyas said he was herding them at night through the forest for fear of gau rakshaks (and the law).

"Aslam has told the police the attackers said 'MLA hamara admi hai.' He heard them thrashing Rakbar. They fired in the air. Yes, the police delayed bringing him to hospital. But from all the evidence we have, it is clear that he was murdered by gau rakshaks," said lawyer Ramzan Chaudhary, who is representing Rakbar's family.

"This story (of the police murdering Rakbar) was cooked up by Sharma, who leads the MLA's gau rakshak gangs in Ramgarh."

Chaudhary went on: "Until Pehlu Khan's lynching (in Alwar) last year, people had not heard of the Rajasthan Bovine Act (which has been in force since 1995). Everyone knew cow slaughter was banned and milk producers don't slaughter cattle. It is impractical for less than literate peasants to go to the collectorate for a permit every time they buy a cow from a village across the state boundary. Khanpur is just 17km from Kolgaon."

This is the fifth cow-related killing in a little over a year in Alwar. Two of these were allegedly committed by policemen chasing "cow smugglers" and the rest by vigilantes. Pehlu, a dairy farmer from Haryana, was lynched in Alwar while returning home with cattle bought from Jaipur.

All six people named by Pehlu in his dying declaration are out on bail. Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria had dubbed Pehlu a "cow smuggler" without evidence, echoing the vigilantes who attacked him.

On Monday, Nagaur MP C.R. Chaudhary of the BJP told reporters: "The police have arrested the accused. They took the injured to hospital immediately. Sometimes the media does not give the proper message. I don't think the police lacked in their action."

Rakbar's cousin Khurshid said the family, which includes his wife and children, own 50 heads of cattle including a few buffaloes.

"You can get a cow for as low as Rs 20,000, but a buffalo costs at least Rs 50,000. If Muslims weren't poor, we wouldn't touch cows. But cows give more milk and can graze in the wild. Buffaloes need fodder brought to them," he said.

"We are gradually being pushed out of the trade because of the violence by (MLA) Ahuja's men in Alwar. He openly says on TV that those are his boys, yet he won't be touched. Unless he is prosecuted there can't be peace here."

Ilyas said: "We too used to walk proudly like the Rabari. For as long as anyone can remember, we have bought cows from Rajasthan and grazed them in these hills (the Aravallis). But now, we are routinely thrashed even if we are herding goats. We pay the gau rakshaks for every head of cattle. If it's a buffalo or a goat, they just punch and kick us and take away our money. If it's a cow, we can even be killed."

Village elders said Aslam had been sent to a hospital.

"He has taken very ill and is in shock. He had run across the forests all night after the attack. The TV reporters have been hounding him and he is scared of the lights and cameras. He is from a small settlement in the forests, 5km up the hills from Kolgaon," an elder said.

"We took him to a hospital in Nuh and our Meo elders have taken him somewhere to keep him safe so that Ahuja's men cannot harm him before he testifies in court."