In the years since 2015, the Karwan-e-Mohabbat, the Caravan of Love, founded by activist Harsh Mander, and this writer, among its core members, has visited nearly a hundred places where people, mostly Muslims, had lost their lives to mob violence, often linked to suspicions of cow smuggling or eating beef.

Over nine years or so, they met families who had lost loved ones to such lynchings, listened to their accounts, and offered what support they could.

Barakheda, a quiet village in Madhya Pradesh's Narmadapuram district, was the site of one such lynching on the night of August 2, 2022, when truck driver Nazir Ahmed was passing through with cattle from Nandarwada towards Amravati in Maharashtra along with two companions.

A group of men stopped the vehicle and attacked them. Nazir Ahmed did not survive; his companions were badly injured but lived to give their account of what happened.

The case moved slowly through the courts, taking nearly four years to reach a judgment.

On June 12, 2026, First Additional Sessions Judge Tabassum Khan of the Narmadapuram court delivered her verdict, convicting seven men — Deepak alias Baba Kevat, Ajay alias Ajju Rathore, Prakash Kaushal, Pawan Batham, Amar alias Bhola Batham, Kanhaiya Batham, and Ballu alias Anuj Raghuvanshi, holding them guilty under sections covering rioting with weapons, attempted murder, and murder carried out with a common purpose.

The judge based her decision on medical records, forensic reports, and items recovered from the accused, including blood-stained clothes and weapons, even though some eyewitnesses had turned against the prosecution by the time of the trial, which is not uncommon in cases like this.

Judge Khan noted that the attack was carried out by an unlawful assembly acting together, describing the killing as an act of mob lynching, and treating this as an important factor when deciding the punishment - a clear but uncommon judgement in a trial court.

She did not give them the death penalty but sentenced all seven to rigorous life imprisonment.

What followed was not the usual legal step of filing an appeal in the High Court. Instead, within hours, relatives and supporters of the convicted men gathered at the court and tried to block police vehicles taking the men to jail.

Over the next two weeks, a campaign began that focused less on the evidence and more on the judge.

Some social media accounts claimed that fourteen men had been sentenced, not seven, the higher number repeated by several people, including an editor who spoke of a "fight for justice" for these fourteen so-called cow protectors.

The conversation soon moved from facts to the judge's identity - Tabassum Khan was a Muslim woman, a personal detail which had no link to the medical or forensic evidence but became central to much of the criticism.

Many accused her of favouring her religion over the Constitution, while others called for her suspension and demanded that all her past judgments be reviewed, claiming she had acted with ill will.

The protests were not limited to Madhya Pradesh. On June 22, members of a cow protection group held a demonstration in Peer Muchalla near Mohali in Punjab, far from the scene of the crime, burning an effigy of the judge and demanding her removal.

Videos from the event spread quickly. In one, a man used a communal slur against her and warned of serious consequences if the convicts were not released soon.

The response from authorities to one of these videos drew attention, but instead of immediate arrest for the open threat, the man received a notice from the cyber-crime centre asking him to delete the video or face action, a soft approach which stood in contrast to how authorities have sometimes handled other kinds of speech.

A senior journalist from a news channel described the verdict as "judicial lynching" and expressed support for the families of the convicted men.

Local police in Seoni Malwa later registered a case on their own against unknown persons for promoting enmity and disturbing public order as they increased the judge's security in the wake of the protests and the viral nature of the videos.

The legal community's response came from the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association, which issued a note on July 1 stating that court orders should be challenged through the proper legal route, not by threats or personal attacks on judges.

The association called district judges the backbone of the justice system, noting that they handle the most sensitive cases with less protection than higher courts enjoy.

In their support for Judge Khan, the advocates' group stressed that judicial independence depends on judges being able to decide cases according to law without fear for their safety.

A Congress spokesperson pointed out that the men were convicted not because of their religion but because of what they had done. He noted that the anger seemed to arise mainly from the fact that the judge who delivered the verdict was a Muslim woman.

Cow-related violence has a recorded history in Madhya Pradesh and other states in the region. Cases that end in conviction, especially those that openly describe the crime as mob lynching, remain relatively rare. The fact that this verdict happened at all and used such clear language appears to have made it stand out.

The Constitution protects judicial independence so that judges can deliver verdicts based on evidence, even when those decisions are unpopular or create personal risk. The question now is whether this protection works equally for a sessions judge working in a district court, away from the closer attention that comes with cases in Delhi or state capitals.

Judge Tabassum Khan's verdict rested on standard legal grounds — medical evidence, forensic reports, and the legal principle that holds members of an unlawful assembly responsible for acts done in pursuit of their common purpose.

The additional step of naming the crime as mob lynching and using it as an aggravating factor gave the judgment a clarity that few similar cases have shown.

The appeal against the Barakheda judgment will test the strength of the evidence in a higher court.

The unspoken appeal against the judge's right to deliver it is already being heard on the streets and online.