How cow-related violence has risen in India

The first incident this year was reported on April 1, when Khan was beaten by cow vigilantes in Rajasthan's Alwar district

As Rajasthan police closed investigations against six suspects arrested for the lynching of 55-year-old dairy farmer Pehlu Khan on April 1, 2017, 45 per cent or 35 of 78 cow-related hate crimes were reported this year alone, according to the IndiaSpend database that records such violence.The first incident this year was reported on April 1, when Khan, a resident of Haryana, was beaten by cow vigilantes in Rajasthan's Alwar district. He succumbed to his injuries two days later.
 
On September 1, the crime branch investigating Khan's killing sent its findings to the Alwar police, clearing six people - Om Yadav (45), Hukum Chand Yadav (44), Sudhir Yadav (45), Jagmal Yadav (73), Naveen Sharma (48) and Rahul Saini (24) - from the list of the accused. In his statement to the police, Khan had named these men as being among those who had attacked him. Following the crime branch report, the Alwar police cancelled a reward of Rs 5,000 each for information about six who were earlier absconding. The investigation was based on the statements of the staff of rath gaushala (a cow shelter), 4 km from the crime scene, and mobile phone records.

The gaushala staff said the accused were at the cow shelter at the time of the attack. "Call record details of the six people …further support this," read the police report, which also found Jagmal Yadav, one of the suspects, was a patron of the shelter.
 
On September 6, the Supreme Court ordered the appointment of a 'nodal officer' to address such hate crimes in each district. Prior to this in April, days after Pehlu Khan's death, the top court had sought responses from the Centre and six states, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Jharkhand, and Congress-run Karnataka, and called for action against cow protection groups. Source: IndiaSpend