Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in the western Indian state of Gujarat after an attack on low-caste villagers by cow protection vigilantes.
In violent clashes on Tuesday, a police officer was killed and several others were injured, the local superintendent of police told Agence France-Presse.
Hundreds of people have been detained as authorities try to contain the unrest, which began on Monday and has since spread.
In towns and cities around Gujarat, the home state of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, police fired teargas shells and used sticks to try to control stone-throwing crowds, who have blocked roads and torched state buses.
The protests erupted after video footage emerged of an attack last week on four villagers from the lowest Dalit caste who were taking a dead cow to be skinned.
Cows are considered sacred by Hindus and killing them is banned in Gujarat, but the villagers said the animal had died of natural causes.
Low-caste villagers are commonly tasked with removing the corpses of dead cows from the streets of India, where the animals often roam freely.
The beef and leather industries have also traditionally been associated with lower castes, untouchables, and Muslims whose livelihoods are the worst-hit by the rise of rightwing cow protection movements.
During the 2014 elections, Modi made cow protection a key theme of his campaign, and repeatedly lambasted the Congress government’s “pink revolution”, referring to the flourishing beef industry.
In the past two years, the Modi government has spent 5.8bn rupees on cow shelters (£66m) and is cracking down on the illicit cattle trade between India and Bangladesh. Rightwing groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have been lobbying the Modi government to ramp up these efforts further by creating a separate cow protection ministry. But some argue that Modi’s cow protection rhetoric has gone too far and emboldened rightwing vigilante groups.
Last year, a Muslim man, Mohammed Akhlaq was beaten to death by a Hindu mob in his home for allegedly killing a cow in his village during Eid al-Adha. At least four other Muslim men have been killed in the past year by Hindu mobs on suspicion of eating beef or smuggling cows across the country, and local newspapers regularly carry reports of cow-related violence.
Shambhu Prasad Tundiya, a local lawmaker, said the violence in Gujarat was a sign of frustration among low-caste Hindus after years of discrimination by people from higher castes who often went unpunished.
“Such atrocities by upper-caste people on Dalits have been happening time and again since ages. This is unacceptable,” Tundiya told reporters.
Gujarat’s chief minister, Anandiben Patel, said 16 people had been arrested over the attack and appealed for calm after a series of apparent attempted suicides among Dalits.
“I appeal to Dalit youth to not resort to desperate measures like attempting suicide & assure them that govt is with Una victims,” she tweeted, referring to the town where the original attack took place. “Govt will make sure accused will face a speedy trial.”
The video showed the four half-naked men tied to a car as the activists took turns to thrash them with belts and batons at a crowded marketplace.
Two more Dalits were beaten after they tried to save the other four.
