India, New Delhi: A report issued on Tuesday by the forensic laboratory of the Uttar Pradesh University of Veterinary Services (Animal Husbandry) has once again raised the spectre of communal intolerance in Uttar Pradesh, stating that the meat found in Mohammad Akhlaq’s home belonged to “cow or its progeny”.
This has given the beef ban campaigners a fresh lease of online life to justify Akhlaq’s brutal killing on 25 September, 2015, that had triggered protests across India, after Akhlaq was dragged out of his house and lynched to death for allegedly eating the meat of a cow, an animal which is held sacred by Hindus. The forensic lab report from Mathura is at variance with the preliminary report issued by the Uttar Pradesh Veterinary Department in December which stated that the meat was mutton. That result confirmedmedia reports from October which said that the meat was mutton, not beef. As a matter of fact, there was no mention of beef in the FIR filed by the police soon after the killing. It was after this that the sample was sent to the forensic laboratory in Mathura.