Indians protest against recent attacks targeting Muslims

Thousands of Indians gathered in several cities on Wednesday to protest against recent attacks targeting Muslims across the country.

In the capital New Delhi, demonstrators, including the elderly and parents with young children, sang songs and lit candles in remembrance of those Muslims killed by Hindu zealots and cow protection vigilantes.

In the port city of Mumbai, hundreds of people, including some Bollywood actors from the Indian film industry, gathered under umbrellas in pouring rain.

Mass protests were also reported in several other cities across India.

Demonstrators chanted slogans against the killings and carried placards that read, "Not in my name."

Protesters decried the silence of the Hindu nationalist government in response to public lynchings and attacks on several Muslim men and boys since it took power in 2014.

Gangs of so-called cow protectors or vigilante groups have been implicated in the killing of at least 12 people in the past two years.

Vigilante groups have become active in small towns and cities across India in recent years. Five of the killings have taken place in the last three months alone.

In early April, Pehlu Khan, a Muslim cattle trader, was lynched by a mob in the western state of Rajasthan as he transported cattle he had bought at an animal fair back to his home state of Haryana. Two Muslim men were beaten to death over allegations of cattle theft in India's northeast in May.

Human Rights Watch has said that Indian authorities should promptly investigate the attacks and prosecute those responsible.

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• India urged to stop violence against Muslims

Police are regularly accused of working alongside the vigilantes.

Demands by right-wing Hindu groups to stop the slaughter of cows, considered holy in Hinduism, could have been fueling communal tensions with Muslims.

In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to ban beef across India. Slaughtering cows is banned in many states of India, where the majority of the population is Hindu. The move has been seen by religious minorities as a sign of the growing power of hard-line Hindus. Beef consumption is now permitted in only eight of the country’s 29 states and territories.

Modi's home state of Gujarat has recently raised the sentence for cow slaughter to life imprisonment.

India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently ordered the closure of abattoirs operating without licenses across several states, a move seen as alienating the country's Muslim population.

India's history is pockmarked with horrific Hindu-Muslim communal clashes in the past.

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