Police in western India have arrested a Hindu man they say brutally killed a Muslim labourer in an apparent religious attack.
Press Trust of India
reported late Thursday that the arrest came after the suspect shared a
grisly video of the labourer Mohammad Afrazul being hacked to death and
then set on fire. TV reports aired video of the victim lying on the
ground while a man in the foreground raves against Muslims.
The killing took place in the western state of Rajasthan on Wednesday.
Police
say the accused, Shambu Lal Raigar, raged against intermarriages of
Hindu women and Muslim men. It wasn't clear why Afrazul was singled out.
The killing is the most recent in a spate of attacks on
minority groups, especially Muslims, since the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party swept national elections in 2014. Most of the
violence against Muslims involved fringe Hindu vigilante groups that
have become active in small towns and cities across India.
Muslims are about 14 per cent of India's 1.3 billion people while Hindus make up about 80pc of the population.
Most of the attacks on Muslims were connected to the trade in cows, which many of India's Hindus consider sacred.
Human
Rights Watch has counted seven acts of mob violence killing at least 10
Muslims over allegations of buying or selling cows for beef. Cow
slaughter is banned in most parts of India.
In Rajasthan
state in April, Muslim Pehlu Khan was lynched by a mob as he
transported cattle he had bought at an animal fair back to his home
state of Haryana. Khan and his family were small dairy farmers.