India orders inquiry into murder of men accused of killing cow

India's Deputy Prime Minister, Lal Krishna Advani, yesterday ordered an inquiry into a bloodbath, in which five unarmed "untouchables" were lynched by a mob watched by scores of police and several senior local administrators.

The stoning last week of the five Dalits, or "untouchables", as they used to be called, is an issue that will not go away. It embraces some of India's darkest and most painful themes, including the abusive caste system and rising Hindu extremism. Thousands have died in India this year alone in communal violence, but this is one crime the country's political and human rights activists seem unwilling to forget or forgive.

Mr Advani was responding to pressure from the opposition Congress party, whose president Sonia Gandhi this weekend visited the home of the victims, not far from Delhi, donating money to their families, and demanding a judicial inquiry. In the week since the killings, human and civil rights organisations have been firing off angry statements, and so has India's left wing.

Police claimed they could not control the people because the mob was convinced that the men had killed a cow, sacred to Hinduism, and skinned it. The victims, themselves Hindus, were reportedly licensed to skin animals and sell hides, and had been doing so for years.