- Judge, Tabassum Khan, convicted 14 Hindu supremacist cow vigilantes for the mob lynching of Nazir Ahmad.
- Following the verdict, Khan faced widespread online abuse, rape and death threats, and protests targeting her Muslim identity.
On 12 June, Tabassum Khan, an additional district and sessions judge in Madhya Pradesh, found the men guilty of offences including murder, attempted murder, rioting, and wrongful restraint.
The crime occurred in 2022, when 50-year-old Nazir Ahmad was transporting cattle at night and was intercepted by a group of self-styled gau rakshaks (cow protectors) armed with sticks and rods. Cows are considered sacred by Hindus, and cow slaughter is illegal in many Indian states.
The men dragged Ahmad and his two companions from the vehicle and brutally assaulted them on suspicion of cow smuggling. Ahmad later succumbed to his injuries, while his companions survived and later gave evidence before the court.
In her judgment, Khan described the incident as a clear case of mob lynching.
However, the verdict made her the target of religiously motivated abuse. In the days following the judgment, numerous videos containing threats and abusive remarks directed at Khan, who is Muslim, surfaced online. The videos alleged that she had acted against the men because they were Hindu.
While judicial decisions are often subject to criticism, the attacks on Khan focused not on her legal reasoning but on her religion. The scale of the abuse prompted leading judicial bodies to express support for her, and she was subsequently provided with police protection.
The attacks began shortly after the verdict, when family members of the convicted men reportedly gathered outside the courtroom to protest against the judgment and attempted to stop the police convoy transporting the men to prison. They claimed that the men were being punished for “saving cows”.
An online campaign of abuse then followed, with videos emerging of Hindu right-wing influencers using communal slurs against Khan and issuing rape and death threats.
In one video, a man warned of “bloodshed” across the country unless the convicted men were released within 10 days. At the time of writing, many of the videos remained online and had attracted thousands of likes and shares. The speakers’ faces and social media handles were clearly visible as they issued threats and incited violence.
An anchor from Sudarshan News, a right-wing Hindi news channel, expressed solidarity with the families of the convicted men, stating that “they might have never imagined that their family members, who had put everything on the line to save cows, would be imprisoned for it”. He also urged viewers to “speak up”, saying that “now was the time to fight for the sake of the protectors of cows”.
Several self-described cow protection organisations and Hindutva groups also organised large-scale protests against the verdict.
On 22 June, the Gau Raksha Parishad, which roughly translates as the Council of Cow Saviours, staged a protest in Punjab during which demonstrators assaulted and burned an effigy of Khan. Three days later, the Rashtriya Bajrang Dal held a protest in Uttar Pradesh, calling for the release of the convicted “cow protectors”.
In a post on X, former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju observed that the videos and protests did not merely criticise the verdict, but sought to “delegitimise Judge Khan’s authority as a judicial officer by reducing her identity to her religion”.
“Her Muslim identity became the principal basis upon which the legitimacy of the judgement was questioned. This represented a dangerous inversion of justice. Judicial decisions are meant to be evaluated through legal reasoning, not through the religious identity of the individual delivering them,” he wrote.
Katju later stated that Khan had sent him a message thanking him for his support. According to Katju, she said the abuse had traumatised her and made her feel as though she had committed a crime by delivering her verdict.
Khan has also received support from prominent judicial organisations. The Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (SCAORA) and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) have condemned the threats against her and called for action to be taken against those responsible.
