A stray dog’s act of dragging the carcass of a newborn calf near Ujaleshwar temple in Banbhoolpura turned the entire Haldwani city in Uttarakhand tense with communal friction, and local Hindutva influencers and a BJP leader blamed Muslims for the cow slaughtering and placing it near the temple, alleging it was done to humiliate Hindus and sought a befitting reply, while even before the truth came out, Hindutva supporters pelted stones and vandalised vehicles of the Shama Deluxe hotel.
The unrest spread rapidly through social media, where fabricated claims portraying the incident as a targeted act against the Hindu community proliferated, and the police attempted to contain the situation by registering a case and issuing appeals for calm even as rumours gathered momentum, The Wire reported.
Within hours, provocative messages circulated widely and contributed to a charged atmosphere, and local BJP functionary Vipin Pandey, known for his earlier communally loaded interventions, fuelled the tensions before he was later arrested and subsequently released on bail.
Another influencer linked the rumoured cow slaughter to the Shama Deluxe hotel owned by a Muslim restaurateur, and this linkage resulted in the property being attacked, prompting the police to resort to a lathi charge to disperse the crowd, after which several people were arrested and others booked for rioting.
The narrative that had been built around the alleged slaughter unravelled after CCTV footage showed a stray dog leaving the remains near the temple, and senior police officials confirmed that no communal angle existed.
Civil rights groups noted that this episode follows another instance of cow vigilantism in Ramnagar, where a Muslim man was assaulted over what was later confirmed to be buffalo meat, and they expressed concern over a pattern of vigilante violence driven by misinformation and partisan claims.
Haldwani itself has been experiencing underlying strain over the last two years due to demolition-related tensions in Banbhoolpura, where earlier violent clashes resulted in deaths, and the recent political climate has intensified anxieties as allegations of exam fraud and paper leaks triggered public protests, only for the government to frame the controversy as an act of conspiracy.