Always weighed down by the mountain-sized leg acy of her predecessor, chief minister Anandiben Patel is lurching from one political crisis to another. And the assembly elections are just over a year away. The dust is yet to settle on the Patidar reservation stir of 2015,which eroded the BJP’s hold, built over a dozen years of Narendra Modi’s chief ministership, and the government finds itself faced with an unprecedented Dalit protest that not only threatens to further weaken support for the BJP in the state but could also affect its election prospects in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

The trigger was the beating up and public shaming of four Dalits who were skinning dead cows in Una town of Somnath district in the Saurashtra region on July 11. The four—Ashok Sarvaiyya, Vishram Sarvaiyya, Ramesh Sarvaiyya and Bechar Sarvaiyya— were skinning a cow’s carcass on a plot allotted for the purpose by the Mota Samadhiyara village, when they were set upon by cow protection vigilantes. They were first taken to a village 11 km away, stripped and beaten with rods and sticks. Then, they were brought to Una town, tied to an SUV and thrashed with lathis.

All this happpened near the Una police station. Hundreds watched and the cops too remained mute spectators. Ashok, one of the victims, is on record that when they sought help, the cops watching the beating only mocked them. It was only after a video showing them being stripped and assaulted went viral on social media that the cops were stirred into action and three of the culprits were arrested. “If action had been prompt, instead of people choosing to remain mute spectators to a horrific spectacle, things would have panned out differently,” explains Piyush Sarvaiyya, a Dalit activist who is a witness in the case.