A 23-year-old migrant worker from Bengal has allegedly been lynched in Haryana by a suspected cow vigilante group, which had earlier threatened him for having meat at his residence.

A source said Sabir Mallik was killed on August 27 and his body reached his home in South 24-Parganas on Friday morning.

Haryana police have started a murder case in connection with the incident.

A complaint filed by a relative of Sabir blamed alleged cow vigilantes for the murder.

Sabir was a resident of Jibantala in South 24-Parganas. He had been living at Badhra in Haryana with his wife and working as a scrap collector for the past three years.

According to a family member, a group of three youths went to Sabir’s residence and requested him to accompany them to buy scrap from the Badhra bus stand on the afternoon of August 27.

“He went with them but did not return home by the evening of August 27. The following day, I received a call from a Haryana police officer who informed me that Sabir’s body had been recovered from a nearby area. They also informed me that he had been lynched by unknown persons,” said Babar Ali Mallik, the victim’s uncle.

“We have a few relatives in the area and they later identified one of the suspects as someone belonging to a cow vigilante group. That person had previously threatened them for having meat. As my nephew was speaking Bengali, he was falsely suspected to be a Bangladeshi,” Babar added.

Samirul Islam, the chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Workers’ Development Board, condemned Sabir’s murder.

“It has become a threat for migrant workers from Bengal to work in BJP-ruled states. Speaking Bengali in states like BJP-run Haryana or Odisha is dangerous as aggressive groups like cow vigilantes consider them Bangladeshis. We demand that people of Bengal, across party lines, come together to protest against such brutality,” said Samirul, who is also a Rajya Sabha member of the Trinamool Congress.

“We have seen how Bengal migrant workers were recently tortured in Odisha just because they were speaking Bengali,” he added.

A complaint emerged recently from Odisha, where hundreds of migrant workers from Bengal were allegedly tortured by a group of people who accused them of being Bangladeshis.

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee spoke to her Odisha counterpart, Mohan Charan Majhi, on August 11, urging him to look into the alleged incidents of violence against workers from her state.