NAGPUR: The police have said meat seized from a BJP member brutally beaten up by alleged cow vigilantes in Maharashtra's Nagpur district has been found to be beef.
The police said the meat had been sent to a forensic laboratory to be tested.
The lab report identified it as beef, Superintendent of Police (Nagpur rural) Shailesh Balkawde told PTI yesterday.
The police said it would initiate action against 34year-old Salim Shaha, a member of the BJP's Katol unit, in accordance with the law.
Shaha, a resident of Katol town, was returning home on his motorcycle when a group of five or six men accosted him at a bus stop in the Bharsingi village on July 12. They allegedly ssaulted him on the suspicion that he was carrying beef.
Shaha's family, however, said he may not have known what he was carrying.
The family was initially reluctant to talk about the forensic report, stating that the family was already "in trouble".
But "Salim may not have been aware of what he was carrying," a relative said.
The Nagpur (rural) unit president of the BJP, Rajiv Potdar, said Shaha would be dismissed from the party.
After Shaha was beaten up and taken to a hospital, four men - Ashwin Uike (35), Rameshwar Taywade (42), Moreshwar Tandurkar (36) and Jagdish Chaudhari (25) - were arrested and booked under IPC section 326, pertaining to voluntarily causing grievous hurt.