I/III.
ALLEGED COW SLAUGHTER

Delhi police fail to identify men who beat up buffalo traders, but
book victims for animal cruelty

The authorities claimed that the attackers were from a group called
People For Animals. But the organisation’s chair, Menaka Gandhi,
denies any involvement.

[Photo (of three battered youths): Abhishek Dey]

5 hours ago.
Abhishek Dey

“My friends pleaded for mercy. They kept screaming that they were
transporting buffaloes and not cows. All this fell on deaf ears.”

That is how cattle trader Mohammad Latif recalled an attack on three
of his friends late on Saturday night near Kalkaji temple in southeast
Delhi as their truck carrying 14 buffaloes was stopped by men claiming
to be members of an animal rights organisation called People for
Animals. The men beat up the three cattle traders, leaving them
bleeding from their noses and foreheads. The men alleged that the
cattle traders were taking the animals to be slaughtered – an act that
is perfectly legal.

The three men in the truck, who have been identified as Rizwan (25),
Ashu (28) and Kamil (25), were travelling from their village of
Pataudi Haryana’s Gurgaon district to Ghazipur mandi in East Delhi.
Rizwan was driving the truck. They were followed by friends in three
other vehicles.

Latif and his cousin Anees were in one car, behind the truck. Zahid
and an unidentified relative were in another, while a third vehicle
was occupied by Bijender Kumar and Mohammad Ashfak. Except for Kumar
and Ashfak, who had been in Delhi for sometime to attend a wedding,
the others were travelling from Pataudi.

When the cow vigilantes intercepted the truck and started assaulting
its occupants, the cattle traders behind them decided not to
intervene, fearing that they would be attacked too. “At one point, the
crowd became very aggressive,” said Anees. “We were so scared that we
fled the spot and parked the car around 200 metres away from where we
could still get a glimpse of what was happening.”

Latif and Anees later followed the police van in which their injured
friends were taken to AIIMS Trauma Centre. Kumar and Ashfak chose to
take a rather long diversion. “By the time we returned to the spot,
which was in another 15-20 minutes, there was no one around,” said
Kumar. Zahid and his relative, meanwhile, fled the spot and returned
only on Sunday morning, when he joined his three injured friends at
Kalkaji police station.

All the witnesses have maintained that Rizwan, Ashu and Kamil were
assaulted by a group of men alleging that they were transporting cows
for slaughter.

Here is a video shot by an NDTV staffer who was at the site shortly
after the assault.

Play
Victims in custody
Until Sunday evening, the police had not been able to arrest any of
the members of the mob, who, the authorities initially claimed,
belonged to an organisation called People for Animals. Though they
made little headway in identifying the assailants, the police did
register cases against the three men who were beaten up. The
authorities charged Rizwan, Ashu and Kamil under Indian Penal Code
provisions for killing and maiming cattle and sections of the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

They were granted bail by Sunday evening.

They had been booked after the police registered a First Information
Report on the basis of a complaint by a man named Gaurav Gupta, who
introduced himself as a member of People For Animals, which is chaired
by Union Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi.
However, Gandhi denied all the allegations that the NGO was involved
in the incident. The police seem to have taken her word for it.

Another First Information Report was registered on the basis of a
complaint by Rizwan alleging criminal assault and wrongful restraint.
But the police failed to make any headway in the other case till
Sunday evening. “We are yet to ascertain identities of the accused men
who are involved in the attack,” Deputy Commissioner of Delhi Police
(south-east) Romil Baaniya said. “Teams have been formed for that.”

In video clips aired by news channel NDTV, some men can be seen
claiming that they had followed the truck from Haryana. Though the
assaults had abated by the time the videos were shot, the police are
visible in the images. Despite this, the police say they weren’t able
to make any arrests.

Baaniya said that by the time an emergency response vehicle reached
the spot, the people who had witnessed the attack and most members of
the People For Animals NGO had already left. “At the spot, there was
no means to verify who was involved in the attack,” Baaniya said. “But
there is no cow vigilante group involved in the incident.”

The police claimed to have acted on the basis of distress call from
Gaurav Gupta. When Scroll.in contacted Gupta on Sunday morning, his
brother Saurabh Gupta picked up. He said that he had rushed to the
spot with Gaurav Gupta but by the time they had arrived, the assault
was over. “How can the police even allege that the attack was carried
out by members of People for Animals?” Saurabh Gupta said. “We are
totally ready to cooperate with CCTV footage and whatever the
investigators ask for.”

Activism or vigilantism
Despite the police claims that People for Animals were involved in the
incident, the organisation’s chair, Maneka Gandhi, denied that the
organisation had anything to do with it. In fact, she claimed that the
organisation does not have a separate unit for Delhi. However, on
Sunday morning, the organisation’s website listed the names of both
Gaurav Gupta and Saurabh Gupta (as well as three others) under the
head “PFA Delhi”. By Sunday evening, though, the page had been taken
down.

A screenshot of the contact page of People for Animals website, which
the NGO said has not been updated.
A screenshot of the contact page of People for Animals website, which
the NGO said has not been updated.
Gauri Maulekhi, a trustee in People For Animals, said that website’s
contact page had not been updated for a very long time and that the
Delhi unit ceased to exist in 2014. “Every unit of PFA is registered
as a separate trust but we presently have no unit in Delhi,” she said.
“But anyone can become a member of PFA on paying a membership fee of
Rs 100. Delhi has around 10,000 members but any misconduct on their
part cannot be attributed to PFA.”

She said that several units of the People for Animals were closed down
between 2014-’16. “While the Delhi unit was closed down after the
close down of a monkey shelter it was looking after, two more units in
Dehradun and Haryana had to be closed down for misconduct in the garb
of activism,” Maulekhi said. “While the Dehradun unit was indulging
too much into vigilantism, the Haryana unit was found to be working in
cahoots with some mafia groups.”

Not a first in Delhi
While media reports flashed throughout the day suggested that cow
vigilantism had finally reached the national capital, interviews with
Zahid, Anees, Latif and other cattle traders suggetsed otherwise. “We
are often harassed by such groups and they snatch away both our money
and cattle,” alleged Zahid. “Many a time they physically assault us
too but most such cases go unreported.”

In June 2014, half a dozen trucks carrying cattle were damaged and one
was set ablaze in Central Delhi’s ITO area allegedly by a group of men
belonging to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and People For Animals. A
news report on The Hindu quotes Saurabh Gupta commenting on the raids.

Vigilante attacks in Delhi were reported in 2015 too. In one case a
trucker carrrying buffaloes from southwest Delhi’s Najafgarh area to
Ghazipur mandi was beaten up by vigilantes. In the other, an East
Delhi transporter was beaten by locals in Chilla village, accusing him
of smuggling cows.

II/III.
https://scroll.in/article/835441/video-purporting-to-show-cow-vigilantes-attacking-nomadic-herders-in-jammu-emerges

COW POLITICS

Chilling video seems to show how Jammu cow vigilantes brutally
attacked a family of nomadic herders

11 alleged gau rakshaks are arrested, even as the police book four
members of the family for transporting cattle without permission.

Via Facebook

Yesterday · 10:47 pm.
Scroll Staff

Chilling video shows how a family of nomads was brutally attacked in
Jammu by cow terrorists chanting "Jai shri ram"
pic.twitter.com/9k3bfNxWjk

— Thatgirlinaniqab س (@zackovixen) April 23, 2017
A family of nomadic herders travelling with their animals was attacked
in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday night. Five people
were injured, including an old man and a child, according to media
reports. The police said the group had been assaulted by men who
suspected the cattle were being taken for slaughter.

On Sunday night, a video was posted on social media, ostensibly
depicting the attack. It shows two women begging for mercy as a mob
tries to tear down the structure they had taken shelter in. The police
stands by and is unable to control the mob. Click here to watch the
video. [Facebook account required.]

The senior superintendent of police of Reasi, Tahir Bhat, told PTI
that the nomads were travelling in two groups. One group that included
women was taking the cows and calves, while the other group was
travelling with sheep and goats. From the video, it appears it was the
first group that came under attack, which took place around 9 pm near
Talwara, according to media reports.

On Sunday, Bhat told PTI that 11 people had been arrested for
assaulting the family of nomadic herders. “Four members of the family
have also been booked for illegally transporting cows and calves,” he
said. The nomads did not have the requisite permission to transport
the cattle. The police officer said the 11 men who were arrested for
the attack did not have a previous criminal background.

Scroll.in could not independently establish the provenance of the
video and the identity of the person who shot it.

III.
https://scroll.in/article/835315/a-country-for-the-cow-the-chronicle-of-a-visit-to-pehlu-khans-village

HUMAN TRAGEDY

A country for the cow: The chronicle of a visit to cow vigilante
victim Pehlu Khan’s village

The Mewat farmer lynched by cow vigilantes in Alwar has left behind a
broken family, and a fearful community questioning its place in the
Indian republic.

New Delhi: Anguri Begum, mother of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan along with
her family members stage a sit-in demonstration to demand justice for
him in New Delhi, on April 19, 2017. Photo credit: IANS.

2 hours ago.
Harsh Mander

An impoverished dairy farmer, white-bearded, visibly Muslim, only a
few years younger than me, was lynched on a national highway by a mob
of young men with stones and sticks who claimed that he was a cattle
smuggler. He died later in a private hospital. Compelled and haunted
by images of his attack – captured for history on a couple of mobile
phone cameras – a few colleagues and I went to meet his bereaved
family in their village Jaisinghpur in Mewat, Haryana. When we sat
with them, our eyes lowered, we found it hard to find the words to
convey to the bereaved, distraught and terrified family our sadness,
our shame, and our rage.

And yet before I proceed to tell you their story, in the strange,
fraught times we live in, even I feel obliged to start by underlining
that the murdered man and his sons were innocent, that they were not
cattle-smugglers but legitimate dairy farmers. As though the crime of
their brutal mob killing would be any less monstrous if they had in
some way broken the law. Rajasthan’s Home Minister Gulab Chand
Kataria, while criticising the attack, blamed the victims saying, “The
problem is from both the sides. People know cow trafficking is illegal
but they do it. Gau Bhakts try to stop those who indulge in such
crimes.”

His description of the marauders as Gau Bhakts, or worshippers of the
cow, brought back memories from my years as a district collector in
Madhya Pradesh during the Ayodhya Ramjanam Bhoomi movement, when
rioters who terrorised, burnt and murdered their Muslim neighbours in
town after town of communal frenzy were described benignly in the
press and political speeches as Ram Bhakts, or worshippers of Ram. The
felling of Pehlu Khan on April 1, 2017 on NH8 near Behror, Alwar, by
self-styled cow vigilantes, had as little to do with the love of the
cow as the annihilation of the Babri Masjid had to do with the love of
Ram.

This rationalisation for the hate crime echoed in many television
debates. The studied refusal of the chief ministers of Rajasthan,
where the crime occurred, and Haryana, which is home to the dead man,
as well as the otherwise voluble prime minister to express any outrage
or public regret for the killing reflects the same implied validation.
No one from the Haryana state administration has visited Pehlu Khan’s
home. Alwar’s Superintendent of Police Rahul Prakash categorically
told Rediff.com’s Prasanna D Zore that the 15 men from Mewat,
including Pehlu Khan, who were beaten up by a mob in Alwar on
suspicion of smuggling cows had no verified documents to prove they
were in the dairy business and not cow smugglers, and therefore,
“hundred per cent they were cow smugglers; there is no doubt about
that”. But he was reluctantly prepared to admit: “I don’t know if they
[the attackers] knew for sure if they [the victims] were cow smugglers
or not, but according to the police version they were cow smugglers.”

Before any criminal cases were filed against the lynch mob, the
Rajasthan police first registered a First Information Report against
Pehlu Khan and the young men with him under the Rajasthan Bovine
Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration
or Export) Act, 1995. I have a copy of the FIR. It mentions that they
are charged under Section 5 of the Act. According to this section, “No
person shall export and cause to be exported any bovine animal himself
or through his agent, servant or other person acting in his behalf
from any place within the State to any place outside the State for the
purposes of slaughter or with the knowledge that it may be or is
likely to be slaughtered.” The men were transporting five milch cows
that had only recently delivered and carried papers to prove their
purchase from the cattle market on Ramgarh Road in Jaipur. The only
cattle that are taken to slaughter are too old or diseased to yield
milk. Why would any person transport expensive high-milk yielding cows
for a slaughterhouse that would pay them a small fraction of what they
would earn if they were sold as productive milch cows? And to
transport milch cows for dairying no papers or permission are required
by the law.

A videograb of the attack on Pehlu Khan and others in Alwar.
A videograb of the attack on Pehlu Khan and others in Alwar.
Therefore, there was no ground for any presumption by the police (nor
by the vigilante mob) that the men were cattle smugglers. Even so,
criminal cases were registered against them for crimes that could
confine them behind prison walls for 10 years. They were also charged
under Section 9 of the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of
Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 1995,
which makes it illegal to cause bodily pain, disease or infirmity to a
bovine animal. The claim was that the cows were being treated cruelly
because two or three were packed with their claves in the back of a
pick-up van. I wondered if the policepersons had ever travelled in an
unreserved train compartment, a state transport bus, or seen casual
workers transported in the back of trucks.

By contrast, the police registered cases against the six men named in
the FIR, and 200 others, only after the men who had been assaulted
were charged. Their attackers were charged under relatively mild
sections of the Indian Penal Code – Sections 147 (rioting), 143
(unlawful assembly), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (wrongful
restraint), 308 (culpable homicide), and 379 (theft). On April 3,
Section 308 was changed to that of murder (Section 302) after Pehlu
Khan died in hospital around 7.30 pm. Until the time of writing, none
of the men mentioned in the FIR and in Pehlu Khan’s dying declaration
have been arrested. Saddam Hussain, president of Mewat Yuva Sanghtan,
alleged to the Hindustan Times that the police were unwilling to
arrest the named accused because of their affiliation with right-wing
Hindu organisations, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu Dharma
Jagran and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. “Either there is
pressure from the government to not arrest them or police are not
trying hard enough,” he said.

There are echoes here from the earlier case of lynching of Mohammad
Akhlaq in Dadri by his neighbours over the rumour that he stored beef
in his refrigerator, which also stirred public conscience. Despite
country-wide outrage, criminal cases were registered against Akhlaq’s
family whereas a man charged with his murder who died of an illness in
prison was cremated with his body wrapped in the national flag, in the
presence of a Union minister. Any Muslim or Dalit victim of mob
lynching is somehow criminally guilty, and the killers are nationalist
Hindus understandably outraged because the sacred cow has been
threatened or killed.

The lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, in 2015
triggered country-wide outrage. Image credit: AFP
The lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, in 2015
triggered country-wide outrage. Image credit: AFP
I return to our visit to Pehlu Khan’s village Jaisinghpur, with my
friends Farah Naqvi, Mohsin Khan, Zafar Eqbal and Rubina Akhtar, on
April 18, 2017. The village is indistinguishable from many others in
the district Nuh, earlier known as Mewat or the home of the Meo
Muslim, who constitute 80% of this arid and water-scarce, impoverished
district. We approached their home with trepidation. We had made the
journey because we felt compelled to offer solidarity in a small
personal way, in the times that we live in, which I can only describe
as times of command bigotry, hate led and spurred from the top.

But we did not want to intrude in their time of grief, which was
already far too public. However Ramzan Chaudhary, the large-hearted
and courageous lawyer (and a self-appointed spokesperson of the Meo
people) who accompanied us, assured us that our visit would be
welcomed by Pehlu Khan’s family because he felt we were “not the same”
as many of those who had descended on their home in the past two
weeks. But we still arrived there with unease.

Theirs was a small modest village brick home. A green cloth canopy had
been erected outside the house as the family could not accommodate the
visitors who streamed into their nondescript village every day after
Pehlu Khan’s lynching hit the headlines. There had been before us some
journalists, many local politicians, some religious leaders, and
members of the Kisaan Sabha affiliated with the communist parties.
Farah and Rubina were led into the inner rooms and came back to us an
hour later, harrowed. Pehlu Khan’s mother, a wizened old woman now
completely blind, and his widow and daughters were inconsolable. Pehlu
Khan was an only son. He in turn had eight children. Some were
married, including Irshad, who is in his twenties. The teenaged Arif
was also beaten up with him at Alwar. His daughters and
daughters-in-law cannot make sense of why he was killed. His other
sons and grandchildren are too young to understand what has happened.

Outside, where I sat with the men, the mood was sombre. More and more
men gathered in the hours that we spent there. The elders sat on
benches, the young men squatted on the ground, deferential to age. I
opened the discussion by saying, “We hesitated to come but at the same
time we could not stay away. Because we want you to know that we share
in your grief and in your anger against the injustice that has been
done to you.” They accepted our awkward words with grace, and insisted
that we must first accept their hospitality and only then talk
further. We protested but to no avail. “We have been taught by our
ancestors about how we should treat our guests, even at times like
this.” After much persuasion, we still had to accept some sweetened
soda before we began to talk.

The story of what transpired with them is well known but as Pehlu
Khan’s older son Irshad and others who were part of this traumatic
journey – nephews, neighbours – spoke, the horror for us became even
more palpable. The family owns barely an acre of land, which yields
little for the family. So, they have always raised milch cattle – cows
or buffaloes – and they sell the milk in the village or to richer
landowners in the surrounding villages. They also buy milch cows from
the cattle markets of Rajasthan, sell their milk for a while and
resell them at a slight profit of a couple of thousand rupees. This
helps feed the family. The sons helped out the father and when they
could, drive a pick-up van or a jeep taxi. Pehlu Khan took even his
younger son Arif with him because he wanted him to learn the cattle
trade early.

Members of Mewat Yuva Sangthan take out a silent march in Alwar to
demand the arrest of Pehlu Khan's killers. Credit: HT Photo
Members of Mewat Yuva Sangthan take out a silent march in Alwar to
demand the arrest of Pehlu Khan's killers. Credit: HT Photo
The month of Ramzan is a good one for milk sales, the best time of the
year. People buy milk and curds for the pre-dawn Sehri or the evening
Iftar. Pehlu Khan took a loan as he always did from richer neighbours,
many of them Hindu Thakurs, at an interest rate of 5% per month. They
hired a pick-up van from a neighbour, loaded on it their buffalo that
had stop giving milk to sell, and with Irshad at the wheel, and Arif,
a nephew and some neighbours in the back, they set off for the weekly
cattle market on Ramgarh Road near Jaipur.

This was a market they visited frequently. The cattle traders knew
Pehlu Khan well. He had initially set his heart on buying a buffalo to
replace the one that he sold. But he was offered a cow that had
recently delivered a calf at a lower price. The cattle seller milked
her in his presence and she gave 12 litres of milk. It was a deal.
Other villagers also made their purchases. Together, they hired one
more pick-up truck from the market. Pehlu Khan sat in the hired truck,
with two cows and two calves. Irshad carried three cows in his pick-up
van and drove with his neighbour and friend Asmat. All the cows were
beautiful, healthy, with young calves and bountiful milk yields. In
their villages, they describe pregnant and milk-giving cows as biyahi,
or married.

At the Jaguwas crossing in Behror, Alwar, the pick-up trucks were
stopped by an ugly crowd of about 50 men. They dragged them out,
slapped and heckled them, claiming they were cow smugglers. Irshad
says he showed them the receipts of the cows from the cattle market
but they tore those up. (Fortunately, he was able to get copies from
the cattle market later. He showed us these copies.) They asked the
driver of the truck Pehlu Khan had hired from the cattle market his
name. It was a Hindu name. They slapped him and told him to run away.
The other terrified men tried to run away as well but the crowd caught
them easily. Pehlu Khan was the oldest among them and received the
harshest blows. He tried to pick himself up weakly but the men rained
blows on him again. Asmat was beaten on his back and spine, Arif was
injured in his eye. The mob vandalised the trucks, twisted the bonnet,
and threw rocks on the windscreen and the engine. They snatched their
wallets, watches, mobile phones and all their money. Irshad had Rs
75,000 left from the loan. They snatched this as well.

The crowd swelled. More men joined in the lynching; some vandalised
the trucks as though for sport, some watched, a few took videos on
their mobile phone cameras, some walked past looking at the screens of
their mobile phones as though nothing was amiss around them. No one
came to their aid.

They lost track of time as the beating continued – with sticks, stones
and belts – and one by one all the men fell, lying on the road or
pavements in twisted inert heaps, almost unconscious. They guess some
20 minutes had passed when the police arrived. “They would have set us
all on fire had the police not come.”

The police confiscated their cows and had sent them to a private
gaushala. They took Phelu Khan and orders to a nearby private
hospital, Kailash Hospital, in Behror. It is there that Pehlu Khan
died on April 3. The doctor who did the post-mortem on him told The
Indian Express, “Injuries were the main cause of death. As said in our
post-mortem report, the (thoracoabdominal) injuries were ‘sufficient
cause of death’. The heart attack was secondary.”

Irshad spoke to us haltingly, in a low monotone. He was still visibly
traumatised, and in mourning. Besides, young people do not talk loudly
in the presence of their elders. The older men spoke of how the
families were ruined. How will they repay their loans? Will they ever
get back the cows they had bought? Even if they ultimately did, would
they still be the beautiful milch cows that they had bought? They
would get back some useless scrub cattle, if any at all. The remaining
cash they had taken on loan at 5% interest, compound per month, had
been stolen from them. They would also have to pay for the vandalised
pick-up truck they had borrowed. Their father had taken all the
decisions but he is not there to guide them anymore.

We also visited Pehlu Khan’s neighbour Azmat Khan. The young man,
father of an infant girl, lay on a cot, wrapped in an old nylon sari
converted into a sheet. He was still in pain, not yet recovered from
his spine injury. He held my hand for a long time as I sat by his
bedside. We looked at his medical papers from the private hospital
where he was being treated. They did not look good. “I hope he will be
able to walk again,” I whispered in English to my colleagues. He too
had taken a loan to buy a cow for selling milk in the Ramzan month of
fasting and prayers.

Outside virtually every house in the village is tied a cow or two, or
a buffalo. “Our children rarely drink milk. We have to sell every drop
to repay our loans and bring home food. But now they are terrified
about what the future would hold for them. Anyone can come into our
houses and claim that we are raising the cows for slaughter.” They
have few other options. The land is dry and infertile, and the rains
fickle. Education levels are low. Thousands of young men are drivers
but getting a driving licence for heavy vehicles from the notoriously
corrupt district transport office is difficult. Young men over the
years got licences from far corners of the country, probably because
they had to pay smaller bribes. But over the last two years, these
licences have been suddenly derecognised by the district transport
authorities. Ramzan Chaudhary alleges this was done out of spite in
this overwhelmingly Muslim district, rendering an estimated 75,000
drivers out of work.

Gau Raksha Dal members out to inspect trucks on a highway in
Taranagar, Rajasthan. Image credit: AFP
Gau Raksha Dal members out to inspect trucks on a highway in
Taranagar, Rajasthan. Image credit: AFP
A few thousand men opened biryani stalls on the highways but in 2016
raids by police checking if the meat they used was of cows or
buffaloes caused them to shut shop. Today, you see a small number of
such shops, and they hasten to tell you that their biryani has chicken
and not beef.

And now even dairy farming has become a dangerous vocation. They do
not know what the future holds, how they will feed their children. We
asked how they will manage. “Bardashth karenge, aur kya?” some of them
replied, dully. “We will bear it, what else?” “Bhuke marenge”, said a
few others even more dismally. “We will die of hunger.”

Some of them, though, are planning an unusual if heart-breaking act of
civic resistance. They plan to take their cows to the district
collector’s office and tie them to the gate, leaving it to the
government to do what it will with them. “You do not trust us with the
cow, and we are no longer safe in tending them. Let the government
then take them over!”

As we sat with a large group of men under the makeshift canopy outside
Pehlu Khan’s house, the talk returned over and over to their anguish
about the new climate of hate and suspicion against Muslims that they
found surrounded them. It was never like this, they said. Hindus and
Muslims have always lived together like brothers and sisters. But in
the last two or three years, everything has changed. “We are
watanparasth, true nationalists. Our ancestors made so many sacrifices
for our country. They fought against Babur’s army on the side of Rana
Sangha.” We wanted to stop them: please, you don’t have to do this.
Why must you feel you have to prove your love for your country? But
the words got stuck in our throats as they went on insistently. And
they would also ask, “Who loves the cow more than us Meo Muslims?” Go
to any Meo village home and see how much they love their cows, like
they are members of the family. Any evening, see how lovingly they
bathe their cows. And yet we are being called cow-killers”.

By strange coincidence, the driver of the taxi we had hired from Delhi
to travel to Nuh, a young Dalit Sikh, turned out to be a man who loved
cows. He stopped the taxi on the way and took out rotis from the car
and fed them to stray cows. He said he had worked as a driver for the
owner of a gaushala, and in that time had come to adore cows. When he
is off duty even today, he volunteers to tend stray cows in a
gaushala. Returning from Jaisinghpur, our souls weighed down by all we
had seen and heard, we gave him our leftover sandwiches to feed the
cows. I joined him in feeding them, and as the cows nuzzled on my
fingers, I realised afresh that what had transpired on the highway at
Behror had nothing at all to do with the love of this gentle animal.
Nothing at all.

The words of the villagers in Nuh echoed in our ears. What is our
place in this country, they asked us over and over again. A country
where our life values less than a cow’s?

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