Sunil Kumar (23) was found dead and hanging from a tree on September 3 in Jiyangala village, Shishgarh police station area, Bareilly district of UP. Now, police have arrested 5 Muslim men, the relatives of a Muslim girl from the same village that Sunil was previously in a relation with, for his murder.

Their friendship had caused an uproar and both sides had worked out a settlement in March. However, the Muslim girl’s family never really moved on and decided to eliminate him. The ostensible reason for their crime – Sunil had posted a photo of himself and the girl as his WhatsApp status.

Sunil’s father lodged a complaint accusing Fazal, Yaseen, Abrar, Israr Ahmed, Abrar Ahmed, Sarfaraz Ahmed of murdering his son. After investigating the case, police has now arrested 5 of these men.

Incidentally, this Bareilly village was in the news in 2017 when posters asking a community to leave or face “Trump-like action” had emerged.

Many such cases are reported with sickening regularity, where Hindu men are killed by relatives of Muslim girls they are in a relation with –  Ankit Gautam (SC), Khetaram Bheel (ST), Rahul Rajput, Ankit Saxena, Nagraj (SC) to name a few. In the rare case where a Muslim family is willing to let their child live with a spouse from another community, fundamentalist Muslims and clergy never forget and make life hell for all involved. At times, even the Muslim girl is murdered by her own family. The Islamist moral policing is so severe that even Hindu colleagues seen accompanying Muslim women for some work are not spared.

We are all well aware of how Hindu girls are stalked, raped and murdered by Islamists. And then there is a third category of Hindus falling victims to such inter-faith ‘relationships’: the Hindu male relatives who are murdered for protesting the harassment of Hindu girls – cases like Dharam Sahu, Dhruv Tyagi.

However, if one were to listen to national or international media coverage, the narrative is totally skewed. As one twitter user put it, “One Arbaaz or Rizwanu Rahman murder creates so much international outrage, but for every Muslim victim, there are 20-30 Hindu men killed for being in love with a Muslim girl…Muslims are 20 times more likely to kill a Hindu man over inter-faith affair….Hindus are victims but they are branded as perpetrators due to some anti-Muslim slogans near mosques, where no Muslim gets killed…there are many Hindu journalists who genuinely care for Muslim rights, but most Muslim journalists care for their own religion only and do whataboutery”.