Police in India have shot hundreds of Muslims accused of cattle smuggling in the leg, leaving many of them disabled, according to an investigative report by the US news agency the Associated Press.
Rights activists say police in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, are carrying out this extrajudicial abuse, targeting Muslims to please the country’s Hindu majority.
The practice, known locally as “Operation Langda” (Operation Lame), is now spreading from Uttar Pradesh to other Indian states.
Citing research by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, the report says police in Uttar Pradesh have shot and wounded suspects in about 650 incidents involving allegations of cattle smuggling since 2020. An independent review of these cases found that almost all of those shot were Muslim.
In every case, the wound was in the same place: just below the knee. Rights activists say the figures are based only on incidents the police themselves made public, so the real number is much higher.
Senior Uttar Pradesh police officer Amitabh Yash denied the allegations, saying police open fire only in self-defence. He also said there is no official instruction to shoot below the knee.
Forensic experts and doctors say otherwise. Dr Mohammad Kalim Khan, a professor of forensic medicine at Aligarh Muslim University, said it is practically impossible for a shot fired from a distance at a person running away or fighting to strike the leg at a level angle, passing only through muscle without touching bone. “This is not shooting in self-defence. These are deliberate shots fired from very close range,” he said.
India’s judiciary has also voiced concern about these extrajudicial actions. Earlier this year, the Allahabad High Court sharply criticised the Uttar Pradesh police, saying such a self-appointed role for the police in delivering justice is entirely unlawful. “These police encounters, especially shooting suspects in the leg, have now become a routine practice, which is against the constitution,” one of the court’s judges said.
“This is state-sponsored violence,” said rights activist Sandeep Pandey. “Muslims are being targeted this way to attract Hindu voters, using religious sentiment and the ‘zero tolerance’ policy of Narendra Modi’s BJP government and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.”
According to the data, only 4.8 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s police force is Muslim, far below the community’s share of the state’s population. Meanwhile, about 93 percent of the suspects wounded over cattle smuggling allegations are Muslim.
The victims’ families live in fear. The mother of one victim, who worked in the buffalo trade, said her son was picked up on a false cattle smuggling charge and shot in both knees. Disabled, he can no longer work, and the family is getting by on help from others and loans.
Rights activists fear that unless this policy of “half encounters”, or maiming suspects, is stopped, India’s legal system and democracy will be under serious threat.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report