india

Updated: Oct 18, 2019 00:56 IST

Bhopal/Gwalior: Seventeen stray cows died of starvation in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior district after they were herded and locked inside a room at a school by local residents a week ago because the cattle were disrupting traffic on the highway, district and police officials said on Thursday.

The matter came to light on Wednesday night when the residents were trying to bury the carcasses in Samnadan village , using an excavating machine for digging, the officials said. The cows had been locked in a room at a government school room in Dabra, 460 km north of Bhopal .

Chief Minister Kamal Nath ordered an inquiry as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleged that the incident proved he hollowness of the claim by the Congress government of Madhya Pradesh that it was committed to the protection of cows.

The police said a first information report was registered under Madhya Pradesh’s anti-cow slaughter law and under provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act against 10 unknown people and also the owners of the excavating machine.

“Police personnel have been deployed in the area to maintain law and order,” Gwalior’s superintendent of police, Navneet Bhasin, said. He said the carcasses had been buried “respectfully in the outskirts of the village.”

“Prima facie, the abandoned cows were roaming on National Highway 75 and creating trouble for commuters. The villagers of Samnadan drove them and locked them in a room of a government high school a week ago,” said area sub-divisional magistrate of Dabra, Raghvendra Pandey.

Pandey said the villagers did not provide food and water to the cows. “As the smell of their rotten bodies spread in the village, the villagers tried to bury the bodies in the school premises. Some gau rakshak (cow vigilantes) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders reached the spot and created a ruckus. Later, police and district administration officials reached the spot and controlled the situation,” he said.

Gwalior district collector Anurag Chaudhary ordered an inquiry against the school administration, village sarpanch (headman) and villagers and asked sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), Dabra, to submit a report in three days.

Condemning the incident, chief minister Nath said his government was committed to the “protection” and “welfare” of cows. “Such incidents will not be tolerated,” he tweeted.

BJP spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal said, “From day one, the Congress-led state government has been making announcements to provide safety to cows in MP but the announcements proved hollow as nothing happened in the past 10 months. The state government is responsible for death of the cows as animal husbandry minister Lakhan Singh Yadav failed to save the cows in his own home district.”

Local Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Brijesh Singh said: “The cows were killed by people and the whole village is responsible for that. If the district administration doesn’t take action against the villagers and school administration, we will launch an agitation.”

(with inputs from Mahesh Shivhare in Gwalior)