Police yesterday began an inquiry into officers alleged to have taken a tea break instead of rushing a critically injured lynching victim to hospital in Rajasthan.
Akbar Khan, 28, died of his injuries after being attacked by a gang of “cow vigilantes” in the district of Alwar on Friday.
The murder stoked tension in the area amid media reports police stopped to have a tea break and wasted crucial time instead of taking Khan to hospital.
Police also allegedly cared for the cows first, transporting them to a bovine shelter much farther away.
“Doubts have been cast on the initial response of the local police,” state police chief O P Galhotra said.
“A team has been constituted to look into the circumstances leading to the alleged delay and connected issues.” 
The policemen apparently reached the site of the attack at 1am but the victim was taken to hospital only at 4am, said a police official.
The postmortem report says the victim died at 3.40am.
The Bharatiya Janata Party government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of turning a blind eye to a rising number of vigilante attacks in the name of cow protection.
Rights groups say Hindu mobs have been emboldened under the BJP, which stormed to power in 2014.
The government yesterday sought a report from state authorities on the latest lynching and “steps taken to restore peace” in the area.
It also set up a panel to suggest legal measures to curb mob violence.
The panel has been asked to report in the next four weeks.
A social worker in the region, Vijay Kumar, said that Khan and his friend Aslam were transporting two cows from the fields at midnight.
Some villagers who saw them came out and thrashed Khan.
As it was raining heavily, Khan fell on the muddy field and his companion escaped.
By then, the police reached the scene after being alerted about the attack.
However, as the victim was covered in mud, the police refused to take him in their vehicle and asked the villagers to clean him.
However, ruling BJP’s lawmaker Ramgarh lawmaker Gyan Dev Ahuja demanded a judiciary inquiry, and accused the police of beating Khan.
“They (the accused) slapped the cow smuggler a bit and informed the police. My sources told me that the police took the smuggler to custody and thrashed him to show people that they are taking strict action,” he alleged.
Naval Kishore Sharma, 43, who claims to be a gopalak (cattle rearer) with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and an eyewitness, backed Ahuja’s version.
“Police beat them at the police station also, leading to his death, and took him to Ramgarh community health centre at 4am where doctors declared him dead on arrival.” 
He alleged the police took Khan to the police station first.
Slaughtering cows is illegal in many states and some also require a licence for transporting them across state borders.
In two prominent cases last year, a dairy farmer was killed on a roadside for transporting cows and a teenager accused of carrying beef was stabbed to death on a crowded train.
India has also been rocked by a separate spate of lynchings, with 23 people killed in the last two months after being accused of child kidnapping in viral messages circulated wildly on WhatsApp.


Woman killed after WhatsApp rumours


A mob lynched a woman in Madhya Pradesh after rumours circulated on WhatsApp about child kidnappers, police said yesterday, days after the messaging firm said it was curbing the forwarding of messages. Police said nine people have been arrested and more are being sought after they found the middle-aged woman’s mutilated body near a forest area in the Singrauli district on Sunday. The accused men told police they caught hold of the woman late Saturday after finding her moving suspiciously and seeing a flurry of WhatsApp messages about gangs of child kidnappers in the area, local police chief Riyaz Iqbal said. “We are trying to identify the victim and have circulated her picture to all the police stations,” Iqbal said.