An Indian judge has been placed under police protection after receiving a torrent of online abuse, rape threats, and death threats following her conviction of 14 men for the 2022 lynching of Nazir Ahmad, a cattle transporter beaten to death by self-styled "gau rakshaks" (cow vigilante groups who enforce bans on slaughtering cows, which are sacred to Hindus) in Madhya Pradesh state. Judge Tabassum Khan, who serves as additional district and sessions judge, sentenced the men to life imprisonment on 12 June, but the verdict triggered a coordinated harassment campaign targeting her Muslim faith rather than her legal reasoning, with right-wing influencers and Hindu nationalist organisations holding protests, burning her effigy, and demanding the convicted men be freed as "cow protectors." The scale of the backlash has alarmed India's legal establishment — the Supreme Court Bar Association condemned the threats, two people have been arrested, and the Madhya Pradesh High Court has ordered authorities to account for steps taken to safeguard her — with judicial leaders warning that intimidating judges on religious grounds poses a fundamental threat to the rule of law.