Human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi on Tuesday returned the National Minority Rights Award as a protest against recent lynching incidents and said there is an atmosphere of fear and terror pervading in the country.

Hasmhi was conferred the award in 2008 by the National Commission for Minorities.

She blamed the Centre for the situation and said that "under the present government, the marginalisation of minority groups has become the norm".

She said that there is not only a "deafening silence from this government" but it also "openly connives in encouraging the mob lynching and attacks on minorities".

She also targeted the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) for not playing an active part in ensuring the dignity, security and constitutional rights of the minority communities.

She criticised the commission head's controversial statement saying all those in India who celebrated Pakistan's Champion's Trophy victory should go to that country, or better still "be deported there".

"National Commission for Minorities and the present government has failed in providing even a semblance of dignity and security to the minority communities," she said.

In a letter to NCM, she said: "I return the National Minority Rights award given by the National Commission for Minorities, which has lost all its credibility, in protest against consistent attacks and killings of the members of the minority communities and total inaction, apathy and tacit support to the violent gangs by the government."

"Lynching has become the unaccountable way of outsourcing state violence to strike fear in minds of minorities," the activist said.

"Even before the community can mourn its dead, the next incident takes place. There is an atmosphere of fear and terror."

There have been several incidents of lynching over the past two years, starting with a man in Dadri of Uttar Pradesh in 2015 whom a mob accused of storing and consuming beef.

In April, a dairy farmer was killed after attack on him in Alwar district of Rajasthan by self-styled cow vigilantes.

Last week, a teenager was attacked by a group and killed while travelling in a train from Delhi to Haryana.