MP minister Kusum Mehdele slams owners who let cows roam around, draws ire of activists

“If you explain to owners and conservators to tether cows and calves in sheds, take care of them by providing water and food, then they will neither roam around, nor smuggled or slaughtered. Why do owners run away from their responsibility and pass the blame to others?,’’ the minister asked in a letter accessed by The Indian Express.

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The official letter dated April 27 is addressed to Lokesh Satyani who is co-convener of Ratlam Gauraksha Abhiyan. The minister’s PA told Lokesh over the phone that the letter was in response to a memorandum he submitted to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The memorandum alleged that the anti-cow slaughter act was not being implemented on the ground resulting in widespread smuggling and slaughter. It accused the police of taking bribes and letting off butchers and slaughterers by booking them for minor offences.

“The police encourage slaughterers while booking our activists for serious offences like dacoity,’’ reads the memorandum and demanding that the government release instructions not to harass in any way activists involved in the campaign.

“How can she write such a letter? Is she not a Hindu? We will take to the streets, and if need be come to Bhopal, to protest such unwarranted comments,’’ Lokesh told The Indian Express. He said he was yet to receive the letter but knew it was coming because the minister’s PA had called him up to ask his detailed address. “Was she drunk?’’ he asked when the letter was read out to him.

The memorandum demands that the chargesheet in the cow slaughter offence should also include charges for anti-national activities and for whipping up communal tension. It says the government should mark “sensitive” the routes along which smuggling takes place, and depute a special police officer in each district to act swiftly in such cases.

The minister said, “I stand by what I said in the letter’’ but refused to elaborate on what prompted such strong comments in the first place.

It said the group had caught hundreds of vehicles and lodged FIRs in various police stations and have kept photographic evidence.