Silencing the Present, Remembering the Past

On 22 June 2017, Junaid Khan, a 16-year-old resident of Ballabgarh district was lynched aboard a local train (NDTV 2017a). That day, Junaid along with his brother and some friends had gone to Delhi to buy clothes for the upcoming Eid festivities. While returning on a Mathura-bound train, the boys became embroiled in a dispute over seats (Lakhani 2017; NDTV 2017a). In their testimony, Junaid's brother and friends alleged that the dispute took a communal turn and escalated quickly. Soon, a violent mob of Hindu men gathered to face them. The men taunted them by calling them ‘beef eaters’ and ‘anti nationals’ (Lakhani 2017; Razdan 2017). They also pulled their beards and flung the boys’ skullcaps to the ground (S. Nair 2017; Razdan 2017). The altercation turned violent as the men pulled out knives and tried to pin the boys down. At some point during this scuffle, one of the men stabbed Junaid multiple times as others held him in place. None of the onlookers in that crowded train compartment intervened. The men then threw Junaid, his brother and his friends out of the train and onto the Asaoti Railway Station where Junaid bled to death in his brother's arms (S. Nair 2017; NDTV 2017a).

Junaid's lynching caused nationwide outrage. It dominated the news headlines at the time and led to the ‘#NotInMyName’ protests, which were attended by thousands of people across the country (S. Nair 2017; Wilkes and Srivastava 2017). Although Junaid had been lynched in broad daylight, in a crowded train compartment, within the geographical limits of India's National Capital Region, no eyewitnesses came forward in the days that immediately followed (NDTV 2017b). While public outrage ensured that arrests were made, the police investigation sought to deliberately water down the Islamophobic nature of the crime. In its statement to the media, the police presented Junaid's lynching as an aggravated dispute over seats (Ahsan 2018). The police insisted that while ‘caste abuses’ had been used, it claimed that its interrogation of Naresh Kumar – the self-confessed killer – had revealed no ‘communal angle’ (The Hindu 2017b).

This disappointingly tepid police investigation is itself part of a larger pattern whereby such beef-related lynchings have been normalised in Modi's India.