Rajasthan: Day before Ummar’s burial, wife delivers boy

Ummar was killed by cow vigilantes.

Ummar, the Rajasthan villager killed by cow vigilantes while transporting cattle, was on the autopsy table on Wednesday when, a few kilometres away, his wife Khurshidan gave birth to their ninth child at a primary health centre.

Khurshidan’s oldest child is an 18-year-old son. Before she delivered the boy on Wednesday, her youngest was Aaliya, a year old. Khurshidan now has five daughters and four sons. “She is at home now and our parents, father Shahabuddin and mother Chandri, are taking care of her. But our parents are old and still shaken from the death,” said Ummar’s brother Shoukeen, 25.

Ummar was buried on Thursday. Khurshidan had been berating herself for asking Ummar to get a cow “to provide doodh-ghee for children and sell the rest, like other families in the village”. “No one can even imagine her pain now,” Shoukeen said.

On November 10, Ummar, along with Tahir and driver Javed, were returning from Dausa with cattle when they were allegedly waylaid by cow vigilantes in Alwar’s Govindgarh around dawn. They killed Ummar and wounded Tahir.