Video grab of the two men being ‘punished’ by gau rakshaks. Video grab of the two men being ‘punished’ by gau rakshaks.

In the wake of gunshot injuries to three gau rakshaks over the past two days in Haryana, allegedly in altercations with people illegally transporting beef, a video has surfaced showing volunteers of the Gau Rakshak Dal forcing two men, who they suspected were beef transporters, to eat a concoction of cow dung, cow urine, milk, curd and ghee almost a fortnight ago.

Admitting that they had forced the two men — Rizwan and Mukhtiar — to eat “panchgavya” (cow dung concoction) on June 10, Dharmendra Yadav, president of the Gurgaon Gau Rakshak Dal, said volunteers, acting on a tip-off, intercepted a vehicle transporting “700 kg of beef from Mewat to Delhi” on the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway.

“We had to chase the car for 7 km before we finally managed to stop them near the Badarpur border,” Yadav said. He has no idea who shot the video.

“When we caught them, they had 700 kg of beef in their car. We made them eat the panchgavya to teach them a lesson, and also to purify them,” Yadav said.

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The video shows part of the events that transpired after the car was intercepted. The two men can be seen sitting on the road, with the cow dung concoction in a packet before them, attempting to wash it down their throats with water.

Volunteers, meanwhile, can be heard urging them to “hurry up” and “finish the gobar quickly”, only offering them more water by way of assistance. They can also be heard prompting them to say “Gau Mata Ki Jai” and “Jai Shri Ram”, both of which the duo say as they struggle to swallow the mixture.

When one of the men takes a bit of the concoction out of his mouth to drink some water, he has to gesture to a volunteer, who gets ready to rebuke him, that he is not throwing it away. Towards the end of the barely minute-long video, the men begin to throw up on the road. The video comes to an abrupt end when a man is heard saying “turn off the video”.

The gau rakshaks later turned over the two men to Faridabad police.

Anil Kumar, Station House Officer (SHO) of Sarai Khwaja police station, confirmed that the two men were arrested on June 10. “We arrested a driver and a helper, both of who are now in judicial custody. The meat in their car was confirmed to be beef,” he said.

Faridabad police PRO Sube Singh said, “Police have no information about any video of persons being forced to eat cow dung. We do not know where this happened, who are involved. This did not happen in police presence… If this video is genuine, this calls for a case.”

Sube Singh said: “It was on June 10 that Gau Raksha Dal members caught two persons, Rizwan and Mukhtiar, with 300 kg beef being carried in an Accent car bearing a Delhi registration number in the area under Sector 37 police station, Faridabad. The vehicle was coming from Ballabhgarh and going towards Delhi.”

“They were taken to Bilaspur police station in Gurgaon. Later, they were handed over to Faridabad police because of the jurisdiction of crime. Sector 37 police station (Faridabad) arrested the two persons and registered the FIR under Prohibition of Cow Slaughter Act. Later, they were sent to judicial custody. It has been confirmed by the laboratory that they were carrying 300 kg beef. The beef has been destroyed after taking required permission,” he said.

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