The Arifs were looking forward to having their son home for Eid.Abram is a BCom honours student in Delhi University and like any 20-year-old with friends and studies to juggle, he hardly gets time to visit his parents in Bareilly . Over lunch, though, the excitement at the much-missed family meal soon gave way to anxiety as talk veered towards the recent spate of lynchings of Muslims in the country .Across India -the heart land of UP, Rajasthan , Haryana and even far-off Jharkhand -mosques saw the faithful come for Eid prayers wearing black bands on their arms as symbol of both protest and anxiety, a sense of foreboding looming even as people hugged each other and shook hands."There really isn't much to celebrate," Israr Chaudhary said in Firozabad. "We have never been this fearful."In neighbouring Rajasthan, at least 28 lakh Meo Muslims, residing in various vil lages of Mewat region, observed `Black Eid' on Monday to protest the sudden spurt in attacks on Muslims. In April, 55year-old Pehlu Khan, a Meo Muslim, was lynched allegedly by cow vigilantes on suspicion that he was ferrying cows for slaughter in Alwar.Islamic scholar and former spokesperson of Darul Uloom Deoband, Ashraf Usmani, said, "Police have arrested Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar , but the riot-accused BJP MP and his brother against whom a non-bailable warrant is pending are out and openly hobnobbing with those in power. Law should work the same for everyone."Beginning with the mob lynching of 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri in 2015 over suspicion that he ate beef, there's been a spate of attacks on Muslims in the country. The latest being the murder of a 16-year-old boy , Hafiz Junaid, on a local train in Haryana's Ballabhgarh on Thursday .According to reports, there have been nine cases of mob lynching from across the country in the past three months.(With inputs from Sand eep Rai, DM Sharma, Pankul Sharma, Ashish Mehta)

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