No ban on animal slaughter in Haridwar on Bakr Eid: Uttarakhand HC

In March last year, while declaring Haridwar “slaughter-free”, the state government had cancelled clearances issued to all the slaughterhouses operating in the district’s two municipal corporations, two nagar palika parishads and five Nagar Panchayats.

The order had come ahead of the Kumbh Mela, after BJP MLAs from the district wrote to the then chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat demanding a ban on slaughterhouses in a “religious city like Haridwar”.

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Faisal Hussain, a Haridwar resident, had moved High Court contending that slaughter of animals is an essential religious practice in lslam, particularly on Bakr Eid, and that it should be allowed at the legally compliant slaughterhouse already constructed in Manglore municipality area.

Hussain’s counsel, Advocate Kartikey Hari Gupta, also presented in court photographs that showed animals being slaughtered on roads on a large scale during Eid last year, despite the ban — suggesting that imposing the ban without making a legally compliant slaughterhouse operational has not solved the problem.

Instead, Gupta argued, allowing slaughtering of animals at the facility in Manglore, about 45 km away from actual Haridwar town, will also ensure that religious sentiments of Hindus are not harmed.

“The construction of Manglore slaughterhouse was completed in February, 2021. In March, however, the government declared the entire Haridwar district slaughter-free. We challenged this and said that Manglore is 45 km away from Haridwar town, thus it will not affect the religious sentiments of Hindus. We also mentioned that the slaughterhouse was sanctioned by the government itself,” Gupta told The Indian Express.

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