Syed Khalique Ahmed | India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, JUNE 8—After a pregnant elephant was killed when some farmers fed it a pineapple filled with explosive materials in Palakkad district of Kerala recently, reports have come of a pregnant cow having sustained serious jaw bone injuries when a neighbour of the animal’s owner fed the cow with wheat dough filled with crackers.
Another report has come from a villager in Uttarakhand having poured acid on a bull, injuring it severely. The bull has now been sent to a shelter home and being given treatment after some locals circulated its video on the social media.
While the incident of elephant’s death attracted attention of several BJP leaders including former union minister and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi who called the people of Muslim-dominated Malappuram district as “animal killers”, they are totally silent on attacks on the cow in Himachal Pradesh and the bull in Uttarakhand. Cow vigilante groups and Hindutva brigade who strongly oppose cow slaughter have not so far raised their voice in this connection neither in Himachal Pradesh nor in Uttarakhand perhaps because the offenders in both the cases happen to be Hindus.
Advocate Subhash Chandran, who had filed a complaint against Maneka Gandhi on allegations of spreading ill-will among communities, had said that the former union minister had made “false statements” saying that the elephant had died in Malappuram, a Muslim majority district in Kerala though the truth is that it died in neighbouring Palakkad district which is not a Muslim majority district. Chandra told India Tomorrow over phone that the idea of the former minister was to polarise the society in Kerala on communal lines by using this incident and describing the people of Malappuram as “animal killers” for political gains, the same tactics the BJP used to make political inroads in the rest of the country.
Police have arrested three persons in connection with the death of the elephant, including one P. Wilson, who fed the explosive-filled fruit to the animal. He told police during investigation that they had been using this tactic to shoo the wild boars from their fields but elephant became a victim.
Surprisingly, no BJP leader, either from the Centre or from the respective states where the cow and bull got badly injured, has come forward to make a statement on the issue. Media have also failed to highlight the incident of attacks on cow and the bull in the same way it did in case of elephant in Kerala.
According to reports reaching here, the incident with the cow in Bilaspur district took place in Jhandutta village on May 26 but the incident came to knowledge of others on June 6 only when cow’s owner Gurdayal Singh circulated a video of the injured bovine on social media. Singh alleged that the cruel act was done by his neighbour Nand Lal who fed a wheat dough stuffed with firecracker to the cow when the animal went to graze in a field. Called “aalu bomb” in the local parlance, it badly injured the cow’s jaw and it is under treatment now. The accused has been arrested.
According to locals, farmers in Himachal Pradesh have been using this crude method to protect their crops from wild animals but the forest department officials never took action against them.
In another incident of cruelty against animals, a bull was found in extreme pains for the last two months in the jungles of Falsani village of Dehradun district in Uttarakhand. The entire skin on back of the bull was completely burnt, with serious injuries but nobody mustered courage to inform the forest or any government official because the atrocities on the animal was committed by an influential villager. According to villagers, the incident happened some time in April and the animal was roaming with injuries since then. Some of the villagers secretly informed the forest officials a week ago who have shifted the animal to a shelter home and started treatment for her injuries.
Some time ago, there were several incidents reported from Bhopani village in Faridabad district of Haryana where villagers had poured acid on bulls, to drive them away from their agricultural fields. The acid had badly burnt the skin of the bulls and caused serious injuries.
