Viral videos of Hindu man being hacked to death in India spark unrest
After videos of the incident went viral on social media, a curfew and blocked internet access were announced by officials in the western city of Udaipur, Rajasthan state.
In a video, two men can be seen attacking the victim. In another, two Muslim men appear to confess to the crime and claim to have decapitated the Hindu man. The victim, however, had deep cuts all over his body, including slashes on his neck, but he had not been beheaded, according to police in the state.
The two suspected killers, a tailor, were arrested after a post appeared on his social media account in favor of the now suspended national spokesperson for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party BJP Nupur Sharma, who made derogatory comments about Islam's Prophet Mohammed, Rajasthan police official Hawa Singh Ghumaria told CNN Wednesday.
The victim was arrested on June 12 for allegedly inflaming religious sentiments and has since been released on bail, Ghumaria said.
The state's chief minister Ashok Gehlot said on Tuesday that the two suspects have been arrested and an investigation is underway. More than 600 policemen were deployed to the area by authorities in the state. This incident is very shameful, Ghumaria said at a news conference Tuesday, before urging the public not to watch the videos and appeal for calm. There will be tension. After such an incident, it is always under control, he said. A Muslim teenager was killed at a protest in India. His family wants answers. The killing has reignited the flames of an already volatile situation between India's Hindu majority and its minority Muslim community, which make up about 14% of the country's 1.3 billion population. Asaduddin Owaisi, a lawmaker and president of the All India Majlis-e- Ittehadul Muslimeen political party, condemned the killing and demanded the strictest possible action against the suspects. He wrote on Twitter Tuesday that there can be no justification for it. Our party's stand is to oppose such violence. No one can take the law into their own hands. The leader of the opposition's Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, said he was deeply shocked by the incident. He wrote on Twitter that brutality in the name of religion can't be tolerated. We have to come together to defeat hatred. Hindu-Muslim tensions have remained a constant throughout India's modern history, occasionally escalating into violence, but analysts and activists say relations have worsened since Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP took power in 2014 with a Hindu-nationalist agenda. Since then, the ruling party has been accused of stirring anti-Muslim sentiment by rights groups, activists and opposition parties. The BJP said earlier this month that the party respects all religions, in a statement on its website. The BJP denounces insults of any religious people of any religion, it said. Earlier this month, India scrambled to contain the diplomatic fallout as 15 Muslim-majority countries condemned Sharma's remarks about the Prophet Mohammed. The incident caused uproar among India's key Arab trading partners and calls from around the Gulf to boycott Indian goods. Protests over her comments in India grew deadly after two Muslim boys were killed in the eastern Jharkhand state this month, with an investigation underway to determine who fired the fatal bullets. The BJP suspended Sharma and India's Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying her comments do not reflect the views of the government of India.