- Tuesday, April 01, 2025
In 2019, a video showed Tabrez Ansari forced to chant praises for Hindu gods while pleading for life had gone viral, causing massive outrage across the country.
By: Shubham Ghosh
A COURT in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand on Wednesday (5) gave 10-year jail terms to 10 men for thrashing a Muslim man to death in 2019.
Tabrez Ansari, who was 24 at the time of the incident, passed away after being attacked by people who accused him of stealing a two-wheeler. A video showing Ansari being forced to chant praises for Hindu gods while pleading for life had gone viral, causing massive outrage across the country.
The victim’s family alleged that the police denied him treatment even after he suffered serious injuries. The state police denied any wrongdoing, the BBC reported.
The video footage from the night of June 19, 2019, showed a petrified Ansari tied to an electricity pole and being beaten by the mob. Blood and tears were seen streaming down his face.
The attackers forced him to chant “Jai Shri Ram”, which means “Hail Lord Ram”.
Ansari did as instructed but yet the mob continued to thrash him all through the night. The next day, he was handed over to the police who arrested them for theft. His family alleged that they were not allowed to meet Ansari.
On June 22, the injured man complained of nausea, vomiting and chest pain and was taken to a hospital. But he succumbed to his injuries that he received during the attack.
Last week, trial court judge Amit Shekhar convicted the 10 men “guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder”, the BBC report added.
While the police were initially accused of not invoking a more stringent charge for murder, they later did invoke it against all the accused.
The judge said that there was a lack of enough evidence to convict the accused of murder.
Attacks on minority communities in India are not uncommon and the opposition parties have condemned them. Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called Ansari’s lynching a “blot on humanity”.
While critics have said that attacks on Muslims have increased since 2014 when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power under the leadership of prime minister Narendra Modi and that the PM has not condemned such incidents quickly or strongly, the government has denied the accusations and saying Modi was “pained” by the assault on Ansari days after his murder.
