Indian police arrest “cow vigilante” accused of inciting religious riots

NEW DELHI (Reuters): Police on Tuesday arrested the leader of a Hindu group that protects cows who was on the run after being accused of inciting Hindu-Muslim violence in India’s northern Haryana state, a police official said.

Mohit Yadav, known by his alias Monu Manesar, was arrested for allegedly uploading objectionable and inflammatory posts under a fictitious name on social media before the religious clashes last month, the official said.

Manesar is also accused in a double murder case in neighbouring Rajasthan state.

He was caught in Haryana on Tuesday. The state’s Additional Director General of Police Mamta Singh confirmed his arrest to the Times of India newspaper.

Seven people were killed and more than 70 injured in rioting in two districts of Haryana that broke out after a Hindu religious procession was targeted and a mosque attacked in retaliation in August.

Manesar heads a unit set up by a hardline Hindu group to protect cows, which are considered sacred by India’s Hindu-majority population. The so-called “cow vigilantes” often attack people accused of killing or smuggling the animals for meat.

Two days before the religious procession, Manesar released a video saying he would attend the religious event and he appealed to other Hindus to join him.

Police said the video angered Muslims who then targeted the procession because Manesar is named in a case regarding the lynching of two Muslim men in February this year on the pretext that they were smuggling cows.

Manesar is being held in custody pending further investigations.

A member of the hardline Hindu group Bajrang Dal, Manesar is also a member of the Haryana government’s Cow Protection Task Force and the head of the Cow Protection Unit of Bajrang Dal in Nuh.

In the past, he has said that his “true calling is to protect Hinduism and cows” – an animal that many Hindus consider sacred.

Since the murders in February, police had said that Manesar had been absconding – even though he continued to post new videos regularly on social media.

After the clashes in Nuh, he also gave several interviews to Indian TV channels where he denied any role in the violence.