The abuse directed at Tabassum Khan attacks her religion and not the legal reasoning behind her judgment

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

Hindus consider cows sacred and killing them is illegal in many states.

In one video, a man warned of “bloodshed” across the country unless the convicted men were freed within 10 days. At the time of writing, many of the videos remained online, attracting thousands of likes and shares. The speakers’ faces and social media handles were clearly visible as they issued threats and incited violence.

An anchor of Sudarshan News, a right-wing Hindi news channel, expressed solidarity with the families of the convicted men, saying that “they might have never imagined that their family members, who had put everything on the line to save cows, would be imprisoned for it”. He also urged his viewers to “speak up” as “now was the time to fight for the sake of the protectors of cows”.

Many self-described cow protection organisations and Hindutva groups also held massive protests against the verdict.

On 22 June, the Gau Raksha Parishad (which roughly translates to the council of cow saviours) staged a protest in Punjab state during which protesters assaulted and burnt an effigy of Khan. Three days later, the Rashtriya Bajrang Dal held a protest in Uttar Pradesh state, demanding that the “cow protectors” be freed.

In a post of X, former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju noted how these videos and protests did not merely criticise the verdict but sought to “delegitimise Judge Khan’s authority as a judicial officer by reducing her Identity to her religion”.

“Her Muslim identity became the principal basis upon which the legitimacy of the judgement was questioned. This represented a dangerous inversion of justice. Judicial decisions are meant to be evaluated through legal reasoning, not through the religious identity of the individual delivering them,” he wrote.

Katju later said Khan had sent him a message thanking him, saying that the abuse had traumatised her and made her feel like she had committed a crime by delivering her verdict

Khan has also received support from prominent judicial organisations – the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (SCAORA) and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) have condemned the threats against her and demanded that action be taken against the culprits.

Vikas Singh, president of the SCBA, told the BBC that threats against a judge were a grave issue as the judiciary was interlinked with the fundamentals of democracy.

“If we allow this to happen, no judge will be able to dispense justice,” he said. “In a democracy, a judge must be able to perform their duty without fear or favour.”

Meanwhile, police official Sudhakar Baraskar told the BBC that a case had been registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and two people had been arrested. He said the cyber cell was tracing those sharing inflammatory videos and continuously monitoring social media for more such content.

But Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Hegde argued that the state and the judiciary should do more to ensure Khan’s safety.

In an article in Live Law, a legal news website, Hegde gave the example of how another case involving threats against a former judge was dealt with recently.

Gautam Patel, a former judge of the Bombay High Court, and his family were facing threats for more than 10 months following his 2024 judgment in the a succession dispute within a Muslim community.

Following a public interest litigation filed by three judicial organisations, the Bombay High Court ordered the Maharashtra government to provide protection to Patel. It told the Mumbai police commissioner to supervise the investigation and demanded a status report.

“If a retired judge of a high court deserves state protection and judicial supervision of his case, so does a serving sessions judge in a district court. The principle cannot bend to rank. It cannot bend to religion. It cannot bend to the political weather around a particular verdict,” Hegde wrote.

Last week, the Madhya Pradesh High Court asked senior officials to explain what steps had been taken to protect Khan and identify those behind the threats. It also ordered that her police protection continue. (BBC)

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