On July 31, 2016, Sunday late evening, I received a call from a volunteer in Balasore. I was in Bhubaneswar then. More than 50 truckloads of cattle, I was told, would be smuggled past midnight to West Bengal to be slaughtered. I messaged and phoned the concerned people--the DGP of Odisha, PCRPolice Head Quarters,Balasore SP,Balasore PCR and Khantapada IIC Sudarshan Das. So did my fellow volunteers from GauGyan Foundation (GGF), People for Animals (PFA) and the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI). None of the officers cared a fig. The trucks moved merrily through Balasore.

The next day, I did the only thing I knew would work: I simply landed in Balasore.I had planned to go there around the 15th of August, just about a month before Bakr’id, but the night smuggling on July 31 was the alarm bell I could not ignore.

Until this, I had been in Bhubaneswar/Khorda, which, besides Bhadrak, is a major hub of the cattle-smugglers. About 50 percent of the total smuggling through Odisha into West Bengal happens from here. It made sense to block the smugglers at the source, and I did that for four long months--from April to July end. It is only thanks to the law-keeping done by the Khorda SP, first, Dilip Das, then, ManoranjanMohanty, that I achieved unprecedented results. Smuggling stood reduced to justabout ten percent of the normal.

Officers n Gentlemen

I hardly remember anightduring these monthswhen the illegal traders did not try to smuggle cattle from Khorda and nearby districts, including Puri, Nayagarh and Cuttack. Thrown into this trafficking were the containers regularly coming from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The Hindu mafia agent who facilitates the smuggling of these containers also works for the Khorda dons. He has mainly four Bhubaneswar-based lickspittles, all Hindus, two of whom swore loyalty to the cause and worked shoulder-to-shoulderwith me between October 2013 and November 2014. Today, they are firmly in the mafia’s pocket, and extortionists of the kind Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about in August during Mann ki baat. I am thoroughly used to such betrayals in Odisha and they do not surprise or bother me any longer.

My work, because it is lawful, goes on unhindered. All I really need are the police on my side. And the Khorda police were with me throughout.Like the rest of the Odisha police, they too are overworked and understaffed, and it always bothered me to burden them, but I did not have a choice. The Khorda police, from the SP downward to the Begunia IIC Sarat Chandra Patra and Khorda IIC Ranjit Sahu, were on call each time I needed them, mostly between 11 pm and 3 am.

Only a volunteer passionate about saving mute lives and up against the mafia’s brute power, also complicity of some cops in the crime, knows what it means to have the top police officials answer one’s calls at odd hours--and act on them.

Killer Cops

Cut to Balasore. There is no dearth of sincere and honest cops even here but those in decisive positions are a different kettle of fish:

They are silent when they should be speaking to you;they snarl at you, taunt and threaten you with arrest at the drop of a hat; they question your intentions, integrity and intelligence while they themselves have a deficit of all the three; they have all the leisure to hold lengthy meetings with the cattle-smugglers but are too busyto meet you; they do not have a single constable to enable you to do your Constitutional duty but get a platoon to browbeat you off the road; they set up a police camp at the Seragarh tollgate only to facilitate the cow-killers; they send goons to scare you off the gate and refuse to entertain your complaints against them; they keep tabs on you, act as the mafia’s informers and devise new ways each day to obstruct your work. Worst of all,they say that your view that the daily transportation of four to five thousand cattle through Balasore is for slaughter is “imaginary”, based on “assumptions” and “presumptions” and refuse to brook your complaints.They also insist that the cattle are being transported for farming to Jaleswar in Odisha, not going to the slaughter houses of West Bengal.

Despite such deception and hostility, especially of Khantapada IIC Sudarshan Das, I stood resolutely at the Seragarh tollgate night after night. From August 1 to Aug 23, 2016, not a single truck went at night. Some trucks did go in the morning after I left but my consolation lay in the fact that my vigil prevented the major chunk of smuggling that only happens at night. During this period, between the neighbouring Mayurbanj district and Balasore, together with the local volunteers, we got eight cases of smuggling booked, seven in trucks/containers and one on foot. The Ma Bharati Gaushala in Bampada, Balasore, was the backbone of my campaign as it accepted all the 370 cattle we rescued.

The speed of smuggling before Bakr’id can be judged from this: In a single day, August 7, 2016, at 3.30 am, I caught a truck with 56 cattle at Jharpokharia; at about noon, 50 odd cattle that were being smuggled on foot at Kulliana(both in Mayurbanj) and at 10 pm, a beef-loaded (ten tons) truck close to the Industrial PS in Balasore. The Khantapada IIC did not give me the help I needed to catch the beef truck at the tollgate. I chased it alone for about nine kilometers and asked a fellow volunteer to stop it at the humps 100 meters before the Industrial PS. It is just my good luck that the volunteer was available at five minutes’ notice and the police station was nearby.

The Balasore police were still not shamed into doing anything to stop the smuggling. In fact, their dirty tricks department became more aggressive in their support to the smugglers. On August 21, 2016, in broad daylight, seven hefty men in a Scorpio came to the gate and threatened me when I was alone; at about 7 pm, they came again and passed four containers right in front of me. My complaint to the Khantapada PS was not entertained and Dassaid:“Why should I believe you?”

Mafia’s Hold

This was after I sent a fax to the prime minister about the complicity of the Balasore police in the crime of cattle-smuggling. By writing to the prime minister, I thought I had succeeded in foiling their plan to allow the transportation of 16cattle/truck,as wanted by the smugglers, but they were determined to help the mafia. The Khantapada IIC called me for a meeting to “sort out the issue.”

The meeting was to beheld at SDPO/DSP (Crime) Amresh Panda’s office on August 24, 2016 at 10 am. On the eve of the meeting, I caught two trucks coming from Bhadrak, which had 62 cattle in them. I was hoping that at least this would chasten the police, but no way. The meeting was held. I sat therewith a 22-year-old law student volunteer of GauGyan Foundation while the mafia was represented by six men. Outside, in eight to ten SUVs, there were scores of men, who had come from Bhadrak. A rather repulsive man with a red beard filmed me throughout the meeting. When I objected, Panda told me, there was nothing wrong; even I was free to do the same!

Out of the five IICs, from Balasore police stations along NH 5, Khantapada’s Das was the most ill-disposed towards me. He kept prompting the smugglers to abuse me. The most voluble of the six mafia men called me a “criminal”, an “extortionist”, a “fake” animal welfare officer and an “outsider come to disturb the law and order situation” in the state. Das also sought to link me with the RSS. Sadar PS IIC Dayanidhi Das sniggered at me and Industrial PS IIC Paresh Rout made some noises. The lady IIC, who was not in uniform, I thought, was part of the smugglers’ delegation because of the way she was pouncing on everything I said. Panda, the man of the moment, just wanted to bend me to the mafia’s viewthat it was legal to transport 16 cattle/truck. The police, I was told for the 20th time, had better things to do than to verify the purpose of such a large number of cattle being transported through Balasore.

Police Plot

At past midnight on August 24-- and it was Janamashtmi/Lord Krishna’s birthday--Das, accompanied by a platoon, came to the tollgate in anticipation of the truck coming from Bhadrak. Itarrived. We told him, it was a goods truck, not allowed to transport cattle as per the rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. Das made some sarcastic remarks and dismissed us. Then he waited patiently as the driver went to get glue, pen and paper to stick a banner on the truck, “cattle carrying vehicle”. The whole exercise took 30 minutes. Self-conscious about the crime he was aiding so brazenly, Das expected opposition from me and four other volunteers. He got his entire platoon to surround us as he smugly waived off the truck.

This was nothing but a malicious act of provocation. The Balasore police, I learned from my sources, had hatched a plan with the mafia to kick-start the illegal transportation of cattle onJanamashtmi in order to provoke the local Hindus, foment communal trouble, lay the blame on me, remove me from the scene and clear the way for the smugglers to take the thousands they normally take each day over the subsequent weeks up to Bakr’id. However, having sensed it all, I knew better than to play into their hands. I stood neutrally in the face of it and asked my fellow volunteers to control their emotions.

Over the following six nights, the NH 5 police station IICs, taking turns to facilitate the illegal transportation, passed a total of 70 trucks, apparently with 16 cattle/truck.

On the seventh night, I heard the sound of a tight slap (actually, music) on the face of the Balasore police.

The SP of Bhadrak, from where all the trucks had been coming, put his foot down against the illegality and seized three of the 40 trucks that were on their way out of Bhadrak. Over the subsequent days, the smugglers sat on a dharna, called for my arrest (!), quarreled with the SP and District Collector of Bhadrak but could not do any more illegal transportation. Things were back to square one. I resumed my night vigil-- a couple of nights, half-dead because of fatigue and sleeplessness-- but I was there.May be, some trucks stole their way out when I was sleeping, but not 200.

Hefty Bribes

Why do the Balasore police go to such lengths to help the smugglers?The money stakes are huge. I have got hold of the diaries of smugglers in which accounts of the bribes paid from the top to the bottom of the police are detailed. My primary sources of information are the smugglers out to sabotage the rivals’ business. I have heard of many filmy gang wars among them in the recent months.

As per my sources, the bribe is one thousand rupees per truck to each of the NH 5 police stations.At the rate of a modest traffic of 100 smuggler trucks per night (which goes up to 150 and 200 before Bakr’id), this comes to 100,000 rupees every night. I do not know how many people and who all in the Khantapada or the other Balasore police stations on NH 5 have their hands in the till, but I do know why the top cops crawl before the mafia and why they are hostile to us volunteers. And the hostility is unimaginably personal.

Industrial IIC Paresh Rout in whose jurisdiction I caught three trucks, including the one with ten tons of beef, did a surprise U-turn after the first case. By the third catch, of a kingpin’s container No. OD 01 B 1674on September 10, 2016, at 3.30 pm, Rout was not even ready to book an FIR; I had to seek the SP’s intervention to get it done. He also put my number on the auto reject mode and till date he is not available to me.

Rout and Das have also beenspeaking the mafia’s language about me,trying to dig up dirt on me andthrowing questions in the air: on whose behalf is she working? Why does she choose Balasore to stop the smugglers? Their thick heads register nothing. I have given it in writing that on a 130-kilometer stretch between Bhadrak and the West Bengal border, there is no other place where the trucks slow down and can be caught by us volunteers.

“Hidden Agenda”

Still, the Balasore cops, especially the shady ones, would like to attribute motives to my mission. They can’t stop asking, “What’s in it for her?”

Here is my answer: lying in wait for 22 unbroken hours for a truck that is hiding 30 minutes away and would pass the gate—with Khantapada IIC’s help—if I go off to rest, and I caught this one risking our livesas the truck and an escort vehicle, moving at dangerously high speed, tried to hit our car; travelling five thousand kilometers on the road in 46 days and nights between Balasore and Mayurbanj; meeting police officials and beseeching them to uphold the law; eating the humble pie when a Sudarshan Das speaks rudely to me or prompts the mafia to launch a verbal assault on me; making 150 calls each day, 50 of them to the same person, for information about the loading and movement of trucks; having to say one thing in ten different ways to surmount the language barrier with the local volunteers;having immense mental stamina for wading through the jungle of talk with an illiterate informer to get that one important lead or clue he might have for me. And, there is more…..

Documenting and compiling evidence;sending petitions to the DGP of Odisha and the Prime Minister of India;writing notes of thanks to cops who are helpful; meeting APPs and lawyers, educating them about the animal welfare laws; explaining the GauGyan Foundation philosophy to volunteers, motivating and training them to do lawful work; getting translations done of the laws for those who do not know English;arranging fodder for the rescued cows because the gaushalahas been flooded with hundreds of hungry mouths without a warning and worrying about where the next feed would comefrom.

And, in case the Balasore cops are still wondering about my “hidden agenda”, I would like to remind them about some of the favours we volunteers did to them. The local volunteers, led by Jitendra Swain of the Ma Bharti Gaushala,organiseda JCV to bury ten tons of beef next to the gaushala in the dead of the night so that the police would not have a communal problem on their handswere the truck still found standing outside the PS in the morning; they organised drivers who could take the trucks to the gaushala each time we caught them;they unloaded the dead and buried them, they nursed the half-dead back to life--all of their own volition and without even a pie’s help from the district administration.

Thanks to such dedication, in 44 days--from August 1 to September 13, 2016—we prevented the smuggling of 150—200,000 cattle through Balasore. The thousands that were sent for slaughter with the help of the police in sealed containers and in trucks during my absence from the gate,I have to let them pass into the karmic account of the Balasore police. All those responsible for the crimes, more than the mafia, the policemen/women would have to pay-- in man-made or divine courts. On that consoling note, I end this two-part story.