COME DOWN HARD ON COW VIGILANTES

The Supreme Court is justified in its apparent outrage over cow vigilantism in some states. Its direction to the Central government and six states to respond on a public interest litigation (PIL) plea to declare cow vigilantes “extortionists” and put an end to their atrocities against Dalits and minority communities is apt in principle. That a bench led by Justice Dipak Misra has issued notices to Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh and asked them, along with the Centre, to file their written responses to the PIL petition for initiating criminal action against the vigilante groups reflects its concern over the negative trend. The petition was filed shortly after investigating officials found there was no evidence of cow slaughter by Mohammed Akhlaq, who was beaten and lynched in 2015 on the suspicion of storing beef in his house at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh. The mob’s murderous attack reflected the lengths to which a hate message can go in harming a section of society.

Significantly, the filing of the plea coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s denouncement of these vigilantes as anti-social elements in the garb of ‘gau rakshaks’ for spreading violence against the downtrodden and destroying the delicate social fabric. “The Dalits who were attacked at Una or at East Godavari were only doing their traditional profession of skinning the already dead cow to provide leather to tanneries... the menace caused by the so-called cow protection groups is spreading fast to every nook and corner of the country and is creating disharmony among various communities and castes,” the PIL said. Counsel for the petitioner, entrepreneur and activist Tehseen S. Poonawalla, referred to the recent incident in Alwar, Rajasthan, where a man was lynched by a mob claiming to be cow protectors. The petition pointed to how some State governments even provided cow vigilantes with identity cards. It highlighted the Gujarat Animal Prevention Act, 1956 which deemed that all who acted to protect cows were public servants and no legal action shall be instituted against them. In the Alwar incident, a 55-year-old man transporting cattle died after being beaten by a mob of about 200 ‘cow protectors’. Clearly, some form of action must be taken against those anti-socials masquerading as cow vigilantes, and the court’s intervention will predictably help this process. The State governments that look the other way or support the cow vigilantes must be duly disciplined.