Tabassum Khan: Muslim judge in India faces death threats after convicting ‘cow vigilantes’ for lynching

An Indian judge has become the target of online abuse and death threats days after she sentenced 14 men to life imprisonment for lynching a man to death.

On 12 June, the additional district and sessions judge of a court in Madhya Pradesh state, Tabassum Khan, found the men guilty of offences including murder, attempt to murder, rioting and wrongful restraint.

The crime took place in 2022, when 50-year-old Nazir Ahmad was transporting cattle at night and was intercepted by a group of self-styled “gau rakshaks” (cow protectors), armed with sticks and rods. Hindus consider cows sacred and killing them is illegal in many states.

The men dragged Ahmad and his two companions out of the vehicle and brutally assaulted them on suspicion of smuggling cows. Ahmad later succumbed to his injuries while his companions survived to tell the court what happened.

In her judgement, Khan noted that the crime was a clear case of mob lynching.

But the verdict has made her the target of religious hate. In the days following the judgement, numerous videos abusing and threatening Khan, a Muslim, surfaced online. The videos implied that Khan had acted against the men because they were Hindu.

While judgments are often criticised, the attacks on Khan have focused not on her legal reasoning but on her religion. The scale of the abuse has prompted leading judicial bodies to rally behind her, and she has been given police protection.

The attacks on Khan began soon after the verdict, when family members of the convicted men gathered outside the courtroom reportedly protested against the judgement, external and attempted to stop the police convoy from transporting the men to prison. They alleged that the men were being punished for “saving cows”.

Then began an online campaign of abuse, external, as videos of Hindu right-wing influencers abusing Khan with communal slurs and issuing rape threats and death threats against her began to surface.