Dadri lynching: Three days before attack, my son was called a Pakistani, says mother
02, Oct 2015
Written by Aditi Vatsa | Bisara | Updated: October 2, 2015 10:45 am
Last Friday, Mohammed Akhlaq’s family had arranged a Bakr Eid feast for neighbours and close relatives. That evening, Ahklaq’s 22-year-old son Mohammed Danish told his mother that a group of boys in their village, barely an hour’s drive from Delhi, had called him “a Pakistani”.
It was the first such incident of its kind for the family and should have set the alarm bells ringing — but it didn’t. Three days later, Akhlaq was beaten to death and Danish left battling for life in hospital after being attacked by a mob that accused the family of eating beef and slaughtering cows.
“Some boys from the village were sitting near a shop that day. When they saw my son going to the mosque, they called him a Pakistani. They said, ‘Look, a Pakistani is living in this village. We will not tolerate this. The incidents of Muzaffarnagar (riots in 2013) will be repeated here’. At that time, we did not pay much heed to these comments. We did not realise that this kind of hatred and resentment has been simmering inside their hearts,” Danish’s mother, Ikram, told The Indian Express.
