GUWAHATI: Heartbroken that Salman Khan is missing, a family in Assam has stopped eating food.
He is not the Bollywood superstar but a goat, owned by Md. Gulam Mansuri who hails from Kakopathar in Upper Assam’s Tinsukia district bordering Arunachal Pradesh. The two-year-old animal has been missing since Monday.
As the last-ditch effort to trace the goat, the family has announced a cash reward seeking information on him. It has also widely circulated his photographs through social media.
“Lovingly, we used to call him Dabang Salman Khan who was nicknamed Sonu. He was born and brought up in the house and was like a member of our family. He was like my brother. We had got him circumcised sometime back. He weighed around 40 kg,” Gulam Mansuri’s son, Nasim Mansuri, told this newspaper.
“We all are in shock now. Given the emotional attachment, my parents have stopped eating food from the day he went missing. The children in the house are equally sad as they used to play with him. He would rest on the sofa and eat with us, whatever we ate,” Nasim said.
After Dabang Salman Khan went missing, the family, as well as locals, searched for him in neighbouring villages, goat markets, abattoirs and also in parts of Arunachal Pradesh.
“We went to a bej (quack) on Tuesday morning. He said the goat was stolen from the highway by someone following a planning. We suspect that the thief was lured by the goat’s burly physique. The Kurbani season is also going on,” Nasim said.
He is using social media widely by sharing pictures of the goat. However, the family has not yet lodged a complaint with the police as it believed “the police will not waste their time by searching for an animal”.
“We are aggressively using social media to trace him. We have announced that anyone, who will help trace him, will get a cash reward of anything between Rs.7,000 and Rs.10,000,” Nasim added.