Cattle tortured to make the run across border
BIG MONEY Illegal trade estimated to be over ~5,000 crore annually
Border guards intercept them periodically, but cattle smugglers keep devising ingenuous techniques to send cows and bulls to Bangladesh and feed the beef and leather industry there.
India shares a 4,096km border with Bangladesh and there are multiple points along this boundary – primarily in West Bengal and Assam – where cattle smugglers operate.
A cow that costs ₹5,000 in India fetches up to ₹50,000 in Bangladesh. The illegal cross-border trade is estimated to be worth ₹5,000 crore a year.
Less than two decades ago, when a thin barbed wire fence ran 150m from the zero line (actual boundary) along the India-Bangladesh border, the preferred strategy was to torture and irritate the cattle to make them stomp through the fencing.
“The methods included driving nails on the rumps of the cows, or inserting chilli or petrol in their genitals to make them run in pain. These would be applied on the cows making up the last row in a group of 40-50,” a police informer in western Assam’s Dhubri said.
Breaking through the fence usually killed or maimed the first few cows, but the possibility of their death is factored in when the receivers in Bangladesh pay for the “consignment” in advance through hawala transactions. These transactions, officials say, are controlled by non-Muslim traders, most of them based in Mankachar on the Assam-Meghalaya-Bangladesh tri-junction.
The fence was reinforced with a double fencing in the early 2000s. This made the cattle smugglers switch to other strategies.
One of the techniques involves snorkelers, usually children, who use the hollow of papaya stems to breathe underwater and guide cattle across in rivers and channels flowing into Bangladesh. Of the 263km border, 119.1km is riverine.
The government’s stress on completing the new fence by 2019 – work on some 2,800km is complete – and tighter vigil by Border Security Force (BSF) armed with night-vision cameras and lasers have made smuggling tougher.
But the smugglers defy the hurdles. A popular method, applied mainly by agents in Bangladesh where cattle trade is legal, is a crane made of bamboo.
This involves a sturdy bamboo pole. Agents on the Bangladesh side lower one end of the bamboo for their Indian counterparts to hang a cow. The animal is then swung across the fence.
The latest method is to tie a cow to two pieces of a banana plant and the animal floats across to Bangladesh.
“Ashraful Akand, the kingpin of the operation in Assam, was arrested in West Bengal,” Dhubri police superintendent Longnit Terang said.
The BSF said patrol boats were deployed to prevent cattle smuggling through rivers. “Much of the problem is because there is no law banning movement of cattle from one place to another within India,” a BSF officer said.
Over two dozen farmers and 30 policemen were injured when police batoncharged an angry mob blocking the Bikaner-Ganganagar highway in Lunkaransar on Saturday. Five of them are said to be in a critical state.
The protesters led by former CPI(M) legislator Lalchand Bhadu were demanding canal water for irrigation purposes at fields spread across Lunkaransar sub-division of Bikaner. The district administration later imposed curfew-like restrictions under Section 144 of the IPC.
The farmers’ unrest in Rajasthan, coupled with a spurt in debtrelated suicides, has put the BJPled state government on the back foot. Opposition parties, including Congress and CPI(M), have planned rallies in the coming days. Rajasthan Congress president Sachin Pilot accused BJP of neglecting farmers. “Nine committed suicide across Rajasthan in the last 40 days, while 70 farmers ended their lives over the last three years. The state government issues directives to suppress any protest or demonstration, even if conducted in a democratic manner, because it does not want people to question its working style,” he said.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will address a protest rally in Banswara on July 19.
In Bikaner, around 36 farmers were booked for damaging government property by herding bulls into the sub-divisional magistrate’s office.
However, the farmers claimed that the bovines had entered the premises on their own after officials failed to evacuate them from a nearby place.
Farmers in the area have complained of canal water shortage for irrigation purposes, besides stray cattle laying their crops to waste. They have submitted several memorandums to government officials over the last 10 days. The irrigation department had readjusted about 60 APM (adjustable proportional module) of canal water to regulate the distribution of 3.90 cusecs across the sub-division last month. Farmers, however, remained dissatisfied. When their petitions allegedly fell on deaf ears, they decided to assemble on the highway.