India: Muslim man lynched in Delhi for eating prasad at Hindu temple event

A 22-year-old Muslim, Ishaq Wajid, was lynched in Delhi’s Sundar Nagari area on Tuesday for allegedly eating prasad, or religious offering, at a Hindu temple.

At around 5am, a mob tied Ishaq to an iron pole with a leather belt and beat him up mercilessly on suspicion that he had stolen “prasad”, at a prayer event organised by the area’s Hindus to observe the Ganesh Chaturthi festival.

Ishaq’s sister Uzma told Al Jazeera her brother was lynched “for taking a banana” and the mob left him tied to the pole after the brutal assault.

 As a video of the assault went viral on social media, people demanded action by the police, which registered a case of murder and arrested six people.

Assaults and of lynchings, mainly of Muslims, have been on the rise in India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.