{
 "no": 59,
 "id": "case-59",
 "sk": 20150928,
 "year": 2015,
 "date": "Sept 2015 onward",
 "cat": "Rights and dissent",
 "sev": "red",
 "title": "Cow protection. 44 dead, and a record export year",
 "stamp": "The state stopped counting",
 "human": {
  "v": "<b>At least 44</b> people killed and around <b>280</b> injured in cow-related violence between May 2015 and December 2018, <b>36</b> of the dead Muslim, across more than 100 incidents in 20 states. There is no official count after 2017",
  "est": true
 },
 "cost": {
  "v": "<b>₹34,392 cr</b> of buffalo meat exported in 2024-25 — <b>79.4%</b> of India's entire animal-product export basket — while cow slaughter stays banned across most states",
  "est": false
 },
 "what": "Cow slaughter is prohibited in most states and enforced in practice by self-appointed vigilantes, while buffalo meat remains one of India's largest agricultural exports. Human Rights Watch documented at least 44 killings between May 2015 and December 2018, and found police stalling investigations or joining in cover-ups.",
 "dodge": "The named cases mostly did not end in accountability. More than a decade after Mohammad Akhlaq was killed at Dadri in September 2015 there has been no conviction; all fourteen surviving accused are on bail, and in October 2025 the state applied to withdraw the prosecution entirely, a plea a fast-track court rejected that December. All six adult accused in Pehlu Khan's killing were acquitted in 2019, the court finding serious shortcomings and gross negligence in the police investigation and ruling the video inadmissible. In Rakbar Khan's case four men were convicted in 2023, but of culpable homicide rather than murder, and given seven years. Eleven men convicted for killing Alimuddin Ansari were bailed on appeal in 2019, and a Union minister had already garlanded eight of them at his residence in July 2018, calling it honouring due process. Then the counting stopped: the NCRB gathered data on mob lynching and cow vigilantism for 2017, never published it, and discontinued collection on the ground that the crimes were not defined.",
 "ministers": [
  {
   "n": "Ministry of Home Affairs",
   "r": "Discontinued NCRB collection of lynching and cow-vigilantism data"
  },
  {
   "n": "Jayant Sinha",
   "r": "Union Minister of State; garlanded eight men convicted of a lynching, then on bail"
  },
  {
   "n": "National Crime Records Bureau",
   "r": "Collected 2017 data on mob lynching, never published it"
  }
 ],
 "pos": "The government draws a legal distinction between cow slaughter, banned by states under their own legislative competence and a constitutional directive, and buffalo meat, a lawful regulated export, and so sees no contradiction between the two. On lynchings it says vigilantism is an ordinary crime for state police to prosecute under existing law, that the Prime Minister has publicly condemned cow vigilantism, and that a Group of Ministers was constituted. On data it maintains the NCRB can only publish under heads defined in statute, and mob lynching was not one.",
 "alleg": "The figure of 44 is a documented floor for May 2015 to December 2018, <em>not a total</em>; because official collection stopped, no comparable count exists for the years since. India's world ranking as a buffalo-meat exporter is <em>stated inconsistently by the government itself</em>, tenth on APEDA's own page and third by volume in a 2025 parliamentary answer.",
 "alt": "A statutory definition of lynching so the crime can be counted, published national data, and ministers who do not honour men convicted of killing.",
 "sources": [
  {
   "label": "HRW: Violent Cow Protection in India",
   "url": "https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/02/19/violent-cow-protection-india/vigilante-groups-attack-minorities",
   "tier": 2
  },
  {
   "label": "Pehlu Khan: all six accused acquitted",
   "url": "https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pehlu-khan-lynching-case-all-six-accused-acquitted-by-rajasthan-court/article61584106.ece",
   "tier": 2,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20250324105434/https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pehlu-khan-lynching-case-all-six-accused-acquitted-by-rajasthan-court/article61584106.ece"
  },
  {
   "label": "Union minister fetes convicted lynchers",
   "url": "https://indianexpress.com/article/india/after-feting-jharkhand-men-convicted-of-lynching-union-minister-jayant-sinha-talks-of-due-process-5250451/",
   "tier": 2,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20230726102817/https://indianexpress.com/article/india/after-feting-jharkhand-men-convicted-of-lynching-union-minister-jayant-sinha-talks-of-due-process-5250451/"
  },
  {
   "label": "No data on mob lynching, MHA tells LS",
   "url": "https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/no-data-on-mob-lynching-mha-tells-lok-sabha/article38006653.ece",
   "tier": 2,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20240303090658/https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/no-data-on-mob-lynching-mha-tells-lok-sabha/article38006653.ece"
  },
  {
   "label": "APEDA: buffalo meat export data",
   "url": "https://www.apeda.gov.in/BuffaloMeat",
   "tier": 1,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260617070802/https://apeda.gov.in/BuffaloMeat"
  }
 ],
 "estimates": {
  "deaths": 44
 },
 "caseUrl": "https://whoisresponsible.xyz/case/case-59/"
}