RAIPUR: Four people, including a former Bajrang Dal functionary, have been arrested in Chhattisgarh for allegedly collecting cattle under the pretext of taking them to a shelter and later selling them to traffickers, police said.
The arrests followed the recovery of 41 cattle collected from Narharpur in Kanker district that were allegedly sold in neighbouring Dhamtari district for Rs 2.8 lakh.
The operation began in Narharpur, where accused Gaurav Shori and Himanshu Tiwari allegedly posed as cow vigilantes and told local villagers and village committee head Saradhu Mandavi that stray cattle would be safely lodged at a gaushala in Pandripani village in Kanker.
On the night of September 30, the accused allegedly loaded 41 cows and heifers into six pickup vans, diverted them to Dhamtari and handed them over to a buyer, Hemant Yadav, for Rs 2.8 lakh, police said.
The case came to light after local cattle owner Ravikant Thakur went looking for his missing cow and heifer, which regularly grazed outside and had not returned. Villagers told him that Shori and Tiwari had collected cattle on the pretext of taking them to a gaushala.
Thakur and other villagers then travelled to Pandripani and found that none of the cattle had been brought to the shelter. When confronted by the villagers over the phone and in person, the accused allegedly gave evasive replies before the alleged trafficking came to light.
Narharpur police subsequently arrested four accused — Gaurav Shori, Himanshu Tiwari, Manish Baghel and Vishwanath Kaushik — all residents of Jamgaon. Police recovered 27 cattle from Dhamtari.
Station House Officer Somesh Baghel said the buyer's network was under scrutiny and search teams were looking for the remaining animals that had scattered during unloading.
The case has also triggered a political backlash, with Congress workers staging demonstrations and burning effigies of the Bajrang Dal and the ruling BJP in Kanker.
Congress leaders alleged that people carrying saffron flags in the name of cow protection were involved in commercial cattle trafficking.
Bajrang Dal's Kanker District Convener Pradeep Sahu sought to distance the organisation from the accused, saying Shori had been expelled 18 months earlier and that the outfit had no links with the other accused.
The case has drawn attention to allegations of cattle trafficking being carried out under the cover of cow protection activities.
