ELURU: The 50 cows which died due to asphyxiation while being transported in a container, were buried on the outskirts of Nallajerla in West Godavari district on Friday. The cows died while they were being transported to Hyderabad from Odisha. It was workers of Gosamrakshana Samithi of Dondapudi village in Devarapalli mandal who came to know about the illegal transport of the cows to a slaughterhouse and stopped the container at Yernagudem on Wednesday.
They then complained to Devarapalli police who stopped the container and sent it to Goshala in Kakinada. As there was no place for these cows, the Kakinada Goshala refused to take them. They also found some of the cows had died in the container. The police took the container to Avupadu in Nallajerla where they handed over the container to Kondreddi Srinivas of Avupadu Goshala. As most of the cows had died already, he refused to take them. The Devarapalli police then took the cows to Prakasaraopalem village and dumped the carcasses on the roadside.
Unable to bear the foul smell emanating from them, residents of Prakasaraopalem lodged a complaint with Ananthapalli police. On Friday morning, the 50 dead cows were shifted to Nallajerla where the post-mortem examination was conducted on them. Later, they took the dead cows to Prakasaraopalem forest area and buried the carcasses. The remaining 22 cows which had survived were handed over to Goshala in Avupadu village, police said.
Meanwhile, the truck driver Abdul Saleem of Nizamabad was arrested by the police along with the cleaner. The owner of the truck, who is from Hyderabad, would also be arrested soon, the police said. “This is not an isolated case. There seems to be a big racket working behind the scenes,” a police official said.