Indian judge faces death threats after convicting cow vigilantes in lynching case

On June 12th, in a courtroom in Madhya Pradesh, Judge Tabassum Khan delivered a verdict that would transform her life into something she had not chosen. She found 14 men guilty of murdering Nazir Ahmad, a 50-year-old cattle transporter, and sentenced them to life imprisonment. The crime itself was straightforward in its brutality: in 2022, Ahmad had been driving at night when a group of self-proclaimed cow protectors—armed with sticks and rods—pulled him and two companions from the vehicle. They beat Ahmad savagely on suspicion that he was smuggling cattle. Cows hold sacred status in Hinduism, and their protection is enshrined in law across many Indian states. Ahmad died from his injuries. His companions survived to testify about what happened.

Khan's judgment was legally sound. She found the men guilty of murder, attempted murder, rioting, and wrongful restraint. She explicitly named the crime for what it was: mob lynching. But within days, the verdict became something else entirely—a flashpoint for religious rage directed not at the legal reasoning but at the judge herself.

The assault began in the courthouse. Family members of the convicted men gathered outside, protesting the sentence and attempting to block the police convoy transporting the men to prison. They framed the conviction as punishment for "saving cows." Then the campaign moved online. Videos surfaced of Hindu right-wing influencers issuing rape threats and death threats against Khan, a Muslim woman. One man warned of "bloodshed" across the country unless the 14 men were freed within ten days. These videos, their speakers' faces visible, their social media handles clear, accumulated thousands of likes and shares. An anchor at Sudarshan News, a right-wing Hindi channel, expressed solidarity with the families of the convicted men and urged viewers to "speak up" and "fight for the sake of the protectors of cows." Cow protection organizations and Hindutva groups organized massive protests. On June 22nd, the Gau Raksha Parishad staged a demonstration in Punjab where protesters burned an effigy of Khan. Three days later, the Rashtriya Bajrang Dal held another protest in Uttar Pradesh, demanding the men's release.

What made this campaign distinctive was its targeting of Khan's identity rather than her legal work. Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju observed that the videos and protests did not merely criticize the verdict—they sought to delegitimize Khan's authority as a judicial officer by reducing her to her religion. "Her Muslim identity became the principal basis upon which the legitimacy of the judgement was questioned," Katju wrote. He noted that this represented a dangerous inversion of justice, where a decision should be evaluated through legal reasoning, not through the religious identity of the person delivering it. Khan later told Katju that the abuse had traumatized her, making her feel as though she had committed a crime by doing her job.

The response from India's judicial establishment was swift. The Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association and the Supreme Court Bar Association both condemned the threats and demanded action against those responsible. Vikas Singh, president of the Bar Association, told the BBC that threats against judges struck at the heart of democracy itself. "If we allow this to happen, no judge will be able to dispense justice," he said. Police registered cases under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and arrested two people. The cyber cell began tracing those sharing inflammatory videos and monitoring social media for additional threats. Khan was given police protection.

But some legal advocates argued the response remained insufficient. Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Hegde pointed to a recent precedent: Gautam Patel, a retired judge of the Bombay High Court, had faced threats for more than ten months following a 2024 judgment in a succession dispute within a Muslim community. After a public interest litigation was filed, the Bombay High Court ordered the Maharashtra government to provide protection to Patel and demanded judicial supervision of the investigation. "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," Hegde wrote. "The principle cannot bend to rank. It cannot bend to religion. It cannot bend to the political weather around a particular verdict." Last week, the Madhya Pradesh High Court asked senior officials to explain what protective measures had been taken and ordered that Khan's police protection continue. The case now sits at the intersection of judicial independence and communal violence in India—a test of whether the courts can protect their own when the threats come from those who believe the law itself has betrayed them.