As policemen watched, two women were slapped, kicked and abused by a mob led by cow vigilantes at a railway station in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday.

In a mobile phone video taken by one of the many spectators who did nothing to stop the attack at Mandsaur, around 350 km from state capital Bhopal, policemen are seen making half-hearted attempts to control the crowd.

The police were at the railway station to arrest the two Muslim women; they say they had been tipped off about the women travelling with a large quantity of beef to sell.

Even after the police caught them, the women were assaulted by a crowd that had gathered at the railway station.

In the video, the women are cornered by a crowd that is heard screaming "Gau Mata Ki Jai (Hail holy cow)". They are slapped and punched by the women in the mob until one of them collapses.

The policemen apparently don't try hard enough to protect the women from the blows.

The women were thrashed for nearly half an hour before the police led them away.

Police sources said 30 kg of meat has been recovered from the women.

The consignment was examined by a local doctor who pronounced it buffalo meat, not beef, claim the police.

The women have still been charged, because they did not have a permit to sell meat.

No action has been taken against those who assaulted the women, or the policemen at the spot.

State home minister Bhupendra Singh today said: "No can take law in their own hands. A probe will be conducted."

Cow vigilantism has snatched up headlines and political attention in the past few weeks after national outrage over a video of four Dalit men being flogged, tied to an SUV and paraded for skinning a dead cow in Una in Gujarat earlier this month.

Courtesy NDTV