NEW DELHI, October 19 (IslamOnline) - The lynching of five Dalits (low-caste Hindus) in Jhajjhar district of Haryana state bordering New Delhi earlier this week has taken a new turn as villagers insist it was not the mob of Hindu villagers who killed the five Dalits, but policemen on duty.

The Dalits were killed Tuesday, October 15, in the presence of 50 policemen, a city magistrate and several government officials, including deputy chief of district police. The Indian Express broke the story on October 17.

The police claimed a mob of 2,000 enraged Hindus, led by members of a quasi-fascist Hindu nationalist group called Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP-World Hindu Council) killed these men for allegedly slaughtering a cow.

VHP senior vice-president Acharya Giriraj Kishore told the press in Delhi Friday, October 18, that his men had not led the mob that lynched the Dalits. However, he quoted Hindu scriptures to point out that the life of a cow is more precious than that of a human being.

He said it had to be ascertained whether the cow was killed by the five men or was already dead. Until such time as a report on this was available, nothing could be said. Not even the state government was in a position to say anything, the VHP leader claimed.

However, Kishore shrugged off the enormity of the lynching by asking, Can anyone discipline a mob? The drift of his argument was that people were very much within their right to have lynched the Dalits for taking a cow's life, which is more precious than a man's.

On the other hand, Dalits maintained that they skinned only dead animals, a practice that has continued for hundreds of generations. These low-caste Hindus skin dead animals and bury the carcass. They don't kill cows or any other cattle.

Meanwhile, villagers have alleged that they had nothing to do with the lynching, nor were the Dalits skinning a dead cow. They said the five Dalits were carrying skins of dead animals to a nearby town to sell when the policemen intercepted them, demanding bribe.

The Dalits had always bribed them, but this time an altercation began on the quantum of bribe, the villagers said. That triggered police violence, leading to the murder of the Dalits.

Trade in animal skin is perfectly legal (except in the skin of endangered species). However, it is normal for policemen to demand bribe even for normal, legal business transactions in any field.

Nobody has been arrested for the crime. In any case, killing a Dalit is not a great deal within the Indian Hindu caste system as they are rated even below pigs and cattle in the scriptures quoted by the VHP leader above.

The state government, instead of doing anything meaningful, ordered an enquiry. An enquiry report takes months, even years, to be completed. After that the government invariably drops the case or leaves enough legal loopholes to let the criminals escape justice.

To complicate matters, the government ordered another enquiry Friday, October 18. The high government officials entrusted with the second enquiry declared grandly, "The orders have come today, and we will try and get to the bottom of the truth."

Meanwhile, politicians indulged in predictable skullduggery. A spokesman of the Bhartiya Janata Pary (BJP), a sister organisation of VHP, declared in New Delhi that they condemned any kind of killing, thus equating bovine slaughter with manslaughter.

Equivocating, he issued the bland statement, "We hope the Haryana state government goes into the depth of the matter." He did not hope the culprits were caught and jailed, but that the fact was established whether the cow was "killed" or was dead already. And he forgot about the five men.

Meanwhile, the two major communist parties CPI and CPIM, said the VHP, had incited the mob and taken out a procession to celebrate the achievement of killing five Dalits who had supposedly killed a cow.