Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan today said that these days he feels scared of even seeing or touching a cow. This statement comes days after Khan had returned a cow that was gifted to him by a seer. “Muslims were living in an atmosphere of insecurity … Any cow vigilante might harm or even kill the beautiful and beneficial animal to defame me and the Muslim community,” Khan had said while returning the black cow gifted to him by Shankaracharya of Govardhan Peeth Swami Adhokshjanand Maharaj.
In past, the Samajwadi Party leader had said he was always against cow slaughter and that Muslims should give up eating beef.
On Wednesday, Khan told ETV UP/UK that cow slaughter was completely banned during the time of Mughal emperor Babur. Even, last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah considered cow slaughter equal to killing a human being, the Samajwadi Party leader said.
Khan further said that Muslims should respect the faith of “Hindu brothers”.
Commenting on the recent attack by alleged “gaurakshaks” at Alwar, Rajasthan in which a Muslim man was killed, Khan said, he feels scared of even seeing or touching a cow these days. Khan advised Muslims to take any other profession other than the milk business.
The new government led by Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh has launched a crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses and smuggling of cows from the state.
In the last one year, several attacks have been carried out by “gaurakshaks”, so much so that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to warn the former last year. However, the “gaurakshaks” don’t seem to be affected by the warning.
On April 1, cow vigilantes had beaten a man to death allegedly in Rajasthan’s Alwar district on NH-8. The vigilantes attacked the man and his friends after suspecting that the deceased was smuggling cows through Rajasthan. The deceased, Pehlu Khan, was a resident of Haryana. The incident had even rocked the Parliament and the government had to struggle hard to diffuse the outrage over the incident.