SAYS YOU’RE ANGUS, BUT I DON’T KNOW …
Move to curb violence against cattle smugglers
India has plans to give IDs to millions of cattle to battle smugglers who take them across borders,
NEW DELHI // India is considering tagging millions of head of cattle with identification numbers in an attempt to protect the revered animals, amid an increase in violence by Hindus against farmers accused of cattle smuggling.
The government has told the supreme court that millions of cows will be fitted with a tamper-proof plastic tag linked to a national database to curb smuggling within India and beyond its borders.
Cattle are considered sacred in Hindu- majority India, and their slaughter is a punishable offence in many states. “Each animal will have a unique number that will have details like age, breed, sex, height, colour, horn type and special marks,” said a senior officer from India’s home ministry, which prepared the recommendations.
A panel from the home ministry was asked by prime minister Narendra Modi’s government to propose measures against cross-border smuggling after a petition was filed by an animal rights group in the supreme court. Nearly 175,000 cattle a year are taken across the largely porous borders with Bang- ladesh and Nepal, according to home ministry figures, with unofficial estimates of the illegal cow trade put at nearly two million animals.
But the proposal comes amid an increase in violence by Hindu mobs against farmers transporting livestock, and a broader clampdown on butchers in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh.
Vigilante squads that roam roads checking livestock lorries for the animals have become much more common since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014. These “cow protection squads” beat a Muslim man to death on a main road in Rajasthan this month, after accusing him of secretly taking cattle to an abattoir for illegal slaughter. The man was a dairy farmer driving milk cows.
Three men with water buffalo in their lorry were beaten this week in the capital New Delhi.
At least 10 Muslim men suspected of eating beef or smuggling cattle have been killed in similar incidents across the country in the past two years by Hindu mobs. Most Indian states have banned the slaughter of cows and imposed heavy penalties and jail sentences on offenders, while taking cattle across state borders is also barred in several jurisdictions.