[The
police were cautious about identifying a motive in the killings, noting that
members of the same vigilante group confessed to extorting money from Muslim
cattle traders on at least three earlier occasions. Mr. Singh also noted that
one of the assailants had a personal grudge against the family of at least one
of the victims.]
By Suhasini Raj
NEW DELHI — A member of a
Hindu vigilante group organized to protect cows was among five men arrested on
Saturday in connection with the murder of two Muslim cattle traders, who were
beaten and then hanged from a tree, the police said.
The two victims were
leading oxen to be sold at an animal fair before dawn on Friday when they were
spotted by Awadhesh Sahu, a Hindu man, said Purushottam Singh, a police officer
in Latehar, a district in the eastern India state of Jharkhand.
Mr. Sahu said he believed
that the two were leading the animals to slaughter and summoned seven friends
to intercept them on the highway. The group surrounded the cattle traders,
Mohammad Majloom Ansari, 32, and Mohammad Ibrahim Ansari, 13, took them into
the forest and beat them, in an assault that lasted about 90 minutes, Mr. Singh
said.
The police were cautious
about identifying a motive in the killings, noting that members of the same
vigilante group confessed to extorting money from Muslim cattle traders on at
least three earlier occasions. Mr. Singh also noted that one of the assailants
had a personal grudge against the family of at least one of the victims.
But elements of the case
were reminiscent of a killing that occurred in September, when vigilantes from
Save the Cow, a Hindu activist group, gathered a mob of about 1,000 people and lynched a Muslim man who was rumored to
have slaughtered a cow.
That case drew
international attention, in part because members of the governing Bharatiya
Janata Party condemned the police for filing murder charges, and because Prime
Minister Narendra
Modi appeared hesitant to publicly condemn the violence.
The five detained
suspects have confessed to the crime, the police said, and three other people
are being sought by the police. Among the men still being sought, Mr. Singh
said, is one who made inflammatory statements and “whipped up the passion of
the remaining seven” so that “they could not control their emotions.”
The men arrested in
connection with the killings include a farmer, a clerk, the owner of a cement
shop and the owner of a small school. Mr. Singh said previous threats by the
Hindu group ended once Muslims singled out for intimidation paid money to the
group’s members, “but this time, their passions flared” and “they killed them.”
“At this point, we can
confirm that at least one of them is a member of a cow vigilante group,” Mr.
Singh said.
Ellen Barry contributed reporting.
*
[The rankings are are based on perceptions of visitors to the
website and includes some relevant data from World Health Organisation and
other institutions, Numbeo.com says about the pollution index. The index is an
estimation of the overall pollution in the city with the biggest weight given
to air pollution and then to water pollution.]
By
According to latest pollution index published by Serbia-based
research website Numbeo.com, Nepal’s Capital city sits in the third position of
the pollution ranking with a pollution index of 96.66. The last pollution
ranking published in the middle of 2015 had also placed Kathmandu in the third
position while in the beginning of 2015 Kathmandu was in the fifth position.
The rankings are are based on perceptions of visitors to the
website and includes some relevant data from World Health Organisation and
other institutions, Numbeo.com says about the pollution index. The index is an
estimation of the overall pollution in the city with the biggest weight given
to air pollution and then to water pollution.
The dismal performance in pollution index was expected as a 2014
report of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment shows that
Kathmandu air contains 400 micrograms of particulate matter up to 10
micrometres in size per cubic metre or the PM10 is 400µg/m3. However, the
maximum limit for PM10 set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards is
120µg/m3. Likewise, another 2014 report by Clean Energy Nepal shows that
Kathmandu air contains 260 micrograms of particles smaller than 2.5 micrometres
in size per cubic metre or the PM2.5 is 260µg/m3 against maximum limit of
40µg/m3. The air quality samples for both results were taken from Putali Sadak.
The existing
situation of water pollution is equally troubling. According to a research
conducted by Bagmati Civilisation Integrated Development Committee in October
last year, water in the Bagmati River at Minbhawan contains 0.53 milligrams of
dissolved oxygen per litre or the DO is 0.53mg/l. Comparing this to the fact
that any aquatic animal cannot survive in water with less than 3mg/l shows how
polluted our rivers are. Likewise, chemical oxygen demand of water--total
measurement of all chemicals in the water that can be oxidised--at the same
place is 128.44mg/l and biochemical oxygen demand--the amount of dissolved
oxygen needed by aerobic biological organisms--is 68.3mg/l. The effluent
standard for industries for both COD and BOD is less than 30mg/l.
In the latest
pollution index, Tetovo city of Macedonia has been ranked the most polluted
city in the world followed by Egypt’s capital city Cairo. Other Asian cities
Philippines’s capital Manila, Noida and Delhi of India, Guangzhou of China and
Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam also make the top 10.
In the
Pollution Index for Country 2016, Nepal sits in the 17th place with Egypt as the most polluted
country in the world.