Rage Road

2018. It was the morning after Eid. Qasim Qureshi had left home after receiving a phone call, something to do with cattle purchase. Instead, he found himself cornered. They beat him to death and then said it was punishment for cattle slaughter. Someone had the stomach to film the whole thing as he lay dying, thirsting for water. When police arrived, they dragged him to their vehicle. And when the video of it surfaced, they apologised with alacrity. They admitted they should have been more sensitive. And then they went ahead and said Qasim was a victim of road rage. It all happened in the sugarcane fields of Hapur, UP. Two men have been arrested since - one of them is called Yudhishtir.

Kith and kine

How we got here is not clear. What everyone agrees is it started in 2015. That time too, they said they were avenging a cow. Qasim was beaten with sticks and rods. In Dadri, they bashed Akhlaq's head in with a sewing machine. In 2016, it was the turn of the teenaged Junaid to die thus. In 2017, Alwar's Pehlu Khan was taken for a cow smuggler. All six accused have got a clean chit since. This year, a cow Pehlu owned gave birth.

Lynch pin

The lynchings continue unabated. Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra... It is not about the cow anymore. The latest is the child-lifter bogey. Everyone is angry. Suddenly everyone is a vigilante except those that should be keeping vigil. Or is someone bringing India to the boil on purpose? In Assam, two tourists were killed recently. As the girlfriend of one tourist called his number frantically, someone took the call and said: "We've killed him. See it in the papers tomorrow." Three were killed in Tripura. In Bihar, a group gouged out a Dalit's eye. Qasim's wife, Naseem, has reportedly said: "I want justice or I will raise hell." That, incidentally, was warrior goddess Juno's cry in The Aeneid. Virgil wrote: "If I cannot move Heaven, I will raise Hell."