‘Will PM speak up?’ Sibal on ‘cow smuggler’ killing
New Delhi: Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal on Wednesday said the killing of a class 12 student after being ‘mistaken’ for a cattle smuggler was due to the encouragement given to the agenda of hate, and asked whether Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak up on the incident.
The student, Aryan Mishra, was allegedly chased in a car and shot dead in Faridabad on August 23 by a group of five suspected cow vigilantes who claimed they mistook the boy for a cattle smuggler, police sources said on Tuesday.
In a post on X, Sibal said, “Shame on us. Aryan (class 12th student). Shot and killed by cow vigilantes in Haryana mistaking him to be a ‘cow transporter’! Cause: Encouraging the agenda of hate.”
“Will our PM, our Vice-President, our Home Minister speak up!” the former Union minister said. All the five accused -- Saurabh, Anil Kaushik, Varun, Krishna and Adesh -- were arrested on August 28 and remanded in police custody for two days, Superintendent of Police (Crime) Aman Yadav said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Janata Dal (United) leader K C Tyagi slammed cow vigilantes amid an uproar over the recent killings of two persons in Haryana, saying their action is unconstitutional and no “political outfit” should be doing the work of the police.
He said no one should be allowed to take the law into their own hands and noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had echoed a similar view in 2019 when he slammed cow vigilantes for violence in the name of cow protection. He was replying to a question over the fatal shooting of Aryan Mishra (19) allegedly by cow vigilantes following a car chase in Faridabad. A migrant worker, Sabir Malik, was also killed in Haryana’s Charkhi Dadri allegedly by a cow vigilante group recently. “What they are doing is unconstitutional. It is very much against our Constitution which gives us the right to liberty,” said Tyagi, who recently stepped down as his party’s spokesperson but remains its political advisor.