Sukanya Shantha 
Mumbai: For 72-year-old Ashraf Ali Sayyed Hussain, the journey from Jalgaon to Kalyan has long been routine. He usually boards a train, disembarks at the Kalyan Junction and then takes an auto rickshaw for the final four kilometres to Kongaon, a village on the outskirts of Kalyan where his daughter lives. However, the trip on August 30 was anything but ordinary.
A group of unruly men, all in their 20s and en route Mumbai for a police exam, accused Hussain of possessing “cow meat.”
These men, clearly aspiring to be policemen – the protectors of the law – had transformed into cow vigilantes baying for Hussain’s blood. They punched him in the face, chest, and stomach, hurled abuses, snatched his phone, and recorded the assault on multiple devices before posting it on social media. Following a complaint at the Thane Railway Police Station, three men identified as Akash Ahwad, Nilesh Ahire, and Jayesh Mohite were arrested. Despite clear video evidence of the brutal assault, they were charged only under bailable sections of the new Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) laws and released on bail within a day.
A police statement noting that the accused were arrested from Dhule.
Quarrel over space
The attack, Hussain says, was unprovoked. He had boarded the train from Chalisgaon station in Jalgaon. “The train was crowded, and I was standing until the train got close to Nashik railway station. One young girl who was seated in the upper berth got down from her seat, and I occupied the place. A young man, around 24-25 years of age, who was standing next to me, asked me to make space for him. Since there was no room to squeeze another person, I asked him if he was thinking of sitting on my lap,” the elderly man said. This, he said, angered him and a few others standing next to him.
Hussain continued to be seated until the train approached Kalyan, the station where he was supposed to get down. “I approached my bag; it had two plastic jars full of buffalo meat,” Hussain says in the FIR. Consumption of water buffalo meat is legal in Maharashtra. “The men suddenly demanded I open my bag and show it to them. They started gheraoing me and asked what I had in my bag. I got hassled and claimed it was bullock meat (banned since 2015). In no time, the men started punching me and abusing me,” he says.
‘Throw him out of a moving train’
As Hussain began to move towards Kalyan station, the men chased him. “I could hear some of them say, ‘Throw him out of a moving train.’ I kept resisting them, but they came charging with more blows. They targeted blows to my eyes and my chest,” Hussain recalls.
There were a few among the passengers who felt pity for him, Hussain says. “They kept asking these hate mongers to stop. But the men continued to thrash me,” he says. The men, he says, also threatened to kill him and rape the women of his family if he complained to the police. They also boasted about their connections with the far-right vigilante group Bajrang Dal, involved in cow vigilantism and mob lynching across India, while threatening Hussain.
‘By afternoon, video was on all platforms’
Finally, as the train reached Thane, Hussain somehow managed to get off the train. Some of his tormentors too got off and walked with him to the railway police. Hussain told the police that he had been beaten up.
Hussain’s face was swollen. He was visibly shaken and barely able to speak. His eye socket had already turned black by then. The police overlooked his condition, and a very clear communally charged attack on Hussain was reduced to a common brawl onboard a train. “The police wrote down something on plain paper and asked me to sign it. I could barely see, and was so disoriented that I didn’t even ask them to read it out to me. I signed and left,” he says.
Hussain travelled back to Kalyan and then to his daughter’s place in Kongaon. “It occurred to me that the anger that was shown to me was for the meat that I was carrying. The men showed that kind of hate towards me for the meat they saw in the plastic jars. I threw it into a flowing water body closer to my daughter’s place.” Hussain says he initially tried to hide what had happened on the train from his family. But the men had already shared the video on social media, and by the afternoon, it was on all platforms.
Hussain and activists at the Thane railway police station. Photo: by arrangement.
Police invoke lighter sections of BNS
Once the videos were out, activists belonging to the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) jumped into action and encouraged Hussain to take legal recourse. Hussain, accompanied by his family and a team of SDPI workers, went to Thane police station. The police registered an FIR, and three men, all belonging to Dhule, were booked under sections 189(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for unlawful assembly, 191(2) for rioting, 126(2) for wrongful restraint, 190 for wantonly doing anything illegal and knowing that provocation could cause a riot, 115(2) for voluntarily causing hurt, 352 for breach of peace, 324(4) for mischief causing damage or loss of between Rs 20,000 and Rs 1 lakh, and 351(3) for criminal intimidation by threatening to cause death or grievous hurt. Only under section 351(3) of the BNS can the accused be sentenced to a maximum of seven years. All sections are magistrate-triable, and their release on bail immediately was expected.
Following the Supreme Court’s judgment in a cow vigilantism case of 2018, the Maharashtra government issued a Government Resolution in 2022. The police ought to have applied sections related to communal disharmony, insult, and outrage to religious feelings, among others. However, the police ignored the communal aspect of the incident entirely.
Police were reluctant: Activist
Sarfaraz, an activist associated with SDPI and who was present at the time of registering the complaint, told The Wire that the police were reluctant to add some crucial sections. “We are at the police station. Chacha (Hussain) has been taken for a medical check-up, and we are trying to get the sections enhanced in the FIR,” Sarfaraz had told The Wire from the police station. The police, however, didn’t relent.
Even when the video was circulating on social media, the police didn’t take up the case suo motu. They waited until Hussain returned to file an FIR. Hussain, battered and shocked after the vigilante mob’s attack, was reluctant to register the case. Had Hussain not mustered the courage, the police would not have registered a case. On September 1, hours after the three among the lynch mob were released on bail, the police returned to Hussain’s daughter’s residence to re-record his statement. This, SDPI activists say, was following pressure put on the police to enhance the sections.
Many from the opposition responded sharply after the videos of the attack were widely shared on social media. The state authorities, however, stayed mum. Both Kalyan and Thane are chief minister Eknath Shinde’s home turf, but there has been no word from him so far.