Lynchings to malign real cow protectors, two Muslims tell apex court

Two Muslims from Raipur and Allahabad have moved an urgent petition, urging the Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra not to impose a blanket ban on the cow vigilantism as it will disrupt the work done by genuine persons preventing illegal cow smuggling and meat trade.

Asserting that the cow vigilantism is a legal act, they claimed lynchings are an attempt to malign the real cow protectors.

Calling themselves ‘gau rakshak’, Mohd Faiz Khan from Raipur who undertook a 12,000-km ‘padyatra’ last year from Leh to Kanyakumari to generate mass awareness about cow protection and medicinal quality of the cow milk. Advocate Israr Ullah from Ahmedabad engaged in legal action against illegal meat trade and cow smuggling, plead that the activists across the country work within the framework of the law to protect cows and everyone should not be painted with the same brush.

Their plea is that getting the genuine cow protectors banned will make cow smuggling and illegal meat trade easy. They also insisted that the incidents of violence perpetuated by the meat mafia were much more as compared to the mob violence disclosed in the petition before the Court No 1.

“The silence of the present writ petition on these instances (by meat mafia) ominously condescends the lives of innocent villagers, brave BSF officers and police personnel and compassionate civil society members who have suffered fatal injuries, mental trauma and death at the hands of an armed meat mafia practising brutality indiscriminately against animals and humans,” the petition said.