A Jharkhand court on Friday convicted a local Bharatiya Janata Party worker and 10 others for lynching a Muslim trader in June 2017. The convicts had beaten a 55-year-old man to death in Ramgarh district on suspicion of carrying beef in his van.

A petition the prosecution filed to treat a 12th accused as an adult despite being a minor is pending, The Indian Express reported. The fast-track court in Ramgarh will announce the sentence on Wednesday.

The court found the 11 convicts guilty of murder and rioting, among other charges of the Indian Penal Code. Defence lawyers said they would challenge the conviction in the Jharkhand High Court.

At least three of those convicted are members of a local cow protection committee. They were convicted of criminal conspiracy in addition to the other charges.

The prosecution said this was possibly the first case of cow vigilantism in the country in which the accused had been convicted.

On June 29, Asgar Ansari’s vehicle was set on fire after the mob suspected that he was carrying beef. He was later beaten to death. The Centre had claimed there was no “religious angle” to Ansari’s murder and called it a “barbaric incident”.

The police arrested Nityanand Mahato, the BJP worker who was convicted, on July 1. They said the lynching was not a spur-of-the-moment attack, but a planned move. Mahto heads the party’s district media cell.

The incident took place the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he disapproved of killings in the name of cow worship and that Mahatma Gandhi would have condemned such acts. “Killing people in the name of gau bhakti is not acceptable,” he had said.