Haryana cow slaughter law a damp squib?

GURGAON: Since Haryana’s decision in 2015 to enact a law banning cow slaughter and consumption of beef, vigilante groups have taken it upon themselves to stop cattle smuggling. But the law hasn’t achieved its basic objective of bringing offenders to book.

Conviction rates under the law have been and remain extremely low while investigations plod along. Last year, for instance, 402 cases were filed invoking provisions of the Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan (HGSG) Act, but just eight reached the trial stage.

In Nuh, the district that reports most cases under the Act, 1,192 cases were pending in its courts as of December 2022 while trials were completed in just 69. Only four of these cases ended in convictions. The Manohar Lal Khattar-led Haryana government, within a year of assuming office, passed the HGSG Act in November 2015 to stop cow slaughter and smuggling and ensure welfare of cattle in the state. Under clauses of the Act, cow trafficking, slaughtering and possessing or consuming beef were prohibited. The ban was extended to the sale of canned beef.

However, in these eight years, the state has not formulated rules for effective implementation of the Act, without which investigations have lacked both purpose and direction, lawyers and police officers say. Meanwhile, networks of cow vigilantes have emerged on the scene. Led by Monu Manesar, the vigilantes are now under investigation for three recent deaths – of Nuh resident Waris Khan in January and Rajasthan residents Nasir and Junaid, whose burnt bodies were found in an SUV in Bhiwani on February 16.

In March 2019, Justice Mahabir Singh Sindhu of the Punjab and Haryana HC pulled up the state government for failing to ensure the arrest and conviction of accused booked under the Act. Hearing an anticipatory bail plea of a man who allegedly smuggled cows in Nuh but hadn’t been arrested for over a year, the HC observed: “The situation is quite alarming and mere registration of FIRs for commission of offence under the Act of 2015, resulting in 100% acquittal by the trial courts, can only be termed as police paradise. By no stretch of the imagination can it be accepted that the law enforcement agency is successful in any manner in implementation of the provisions of the Act.”

The first conviction came the same year, in December, when a Faridabad court handed three men three years of rigorous imprisonment under the Act for transporting cow skin in 2016. Police had recovered skins of 413 animals from their vehicles. But the rate of conviction has not improved.