Cattle smuggling in India is the movement of cattle for slaughter and processing from the states of India where cattle slaughter is illegal to those states where it is legal as well as to neighboring countries such as Bangladesh. It is widespread in India, with some estimates stating that over a million cattle are smuggled every year.
Cattle smuggling, states Jason Cons - a professor of Anthropology with publications on India-Bangladesh border communities, is a significant source of communal tension as it implies "transportation of sacred cattle [cow] for slaughter in Muslim meat markets". It is also a source of crimes, violence and has trigerred disputes between the border officials at the India-Bangladesh border.
Video Cattle smuggling in India
Within India
According to Frederick Simoons, cattle smuggling was prevalent during the colonial era such as to the Portuguese Goa. It supplied the urban Goan demand for beef. In the post-colonial era, the reports and scale of cattle smuggling is astounding, where cattle is transported every day in thousand of trucks from Ganges Valley region to slaughterhouses in West Bengal in order to produce beef for exports.
Cows are often smuggled from states such as Rajasthan to slaughterhouses elsewhere, states Amrita Basu. Between January 2009 and February 2016, the Rajasthan police registered over 3,000 cases of cow smuggling, arrested nearly 6,000 people for the crime, and seized over 2,700 vehicles used for cattle smuggling over the seven year period, states a report in The Hindustan Times.
Cattle smuggling in India, states Reena Martins, is an organized and violent criminal network. In Bihar for example, cow smugglers chopped off the fingers of a railway crossing gate guard when he refused to allow smuggling trucks to pass through before a train. Corruption, bribes and cruelty to animals is a routine part of the operation. Martins states that the racket controlled by the "meat mafia" is worth $5 billion in India, and the smuggled cattle are sold for slaughter in khattals with much of the smuggling destined to supply the meat demand in Bangladesh.
The Indian state of Jharkhand expanded its cattle slaughter-related laws in 2005 and has criminalized "killing, cruelty to and smuggling of cows". The Uttar Pradesh state officials announced in 2017 that they will prosecute cattle smugglers under the "NSA, Gangsters Act", which allows authorities to treat anyone caught smuggling cattle under its statutes for organized crime.
Maps Cattle smuggling in India
Bangladesh
Smuggling of cattle and other forms of trafficking is widespread across the India-Bangladesh border. Estimates place the number of illegally smuggled to over one million a year. The vested interests across all parties have failed to curb the large scale smuggling, with some Hindus also involved in the cattle smuggling operations. Cattle smuggling and trade is lucrative and it is a key means for the local elites at the India-Bangladesh border for raising money for politics and for acquiring personal wealth.
Cattle smuggling from India into Bangladesh is akin to drug smuggling networks, states Debdatta Chowdhury. A portion of the smuggled cattle - mainly cows and ox - is obtained from the western and northern states of India, which are predominantly non beef-eating Hindus, transported across India then smuggled across the West Bengal border to satisfy the demand in the predominantly beef-eating Muslim Bangladesh. The states which serve as sources of this smuggled cattle in thousands per day include Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, Bihar, Odisha, numbering thousands each day. According to Chowdhury, between 5000 and 15,000 cows are smuggled everyday across the Bangladesh border. The smuggling generates an average of about US$ 20 per cow in income for the smuggler, about US$ 7 in bribes for Bangladeshi border officials and about US$ 8 in bribes for Indian border officials. Another report by Ashish, Patthak and Khan in India Today states that the operation is a well organized racket of smugglers who use bribes, rampant corruption and evade the law almost every day. They smuggle "young and ageing" cattle from India to Bangladesh slaughterhouses, while the payment is handled through hawala black market.
Other sources estimate the cattle smuggling volume at a different level. According to The Sunday Guardian, "cattle smuggling is rampant in Bengal, with an estimated 60,000 heads of cattle being smuggled out of India into Bangladesh, every day" in 2015, but the rate of this smuggling has dropped because of rising surveillance at the international border. The cattle smuggling rate is placed at nearly two million a year by Robert Wirsing and Samir Das in a 2016 report, with an annual value of about US$ 1.5 billion.
Cattle smugglers, states The Times of India, use dyes to recolor and camouflage the cattle. This makes cattle identification difficult to ease their smuggling across the border, while some groups use grazing pretext to evade the Indian Border Security Force.
Hundreds of thousands of cows, states the British newspaper The Independent in a 2012 article, are illegally smuggled from India into Bangladesh every year to be slaughtered. Gangs from both sides of the border are involved in this illegal smuggling involving an estimated 1.5 million (15 lakhs) cattle a year, and cattle theft is a source of the supply, states Andrew Buncombe. According to a 2014 report by The International Business Times, criminal gangs steal and smuggle cattle from India into Bangladesh, an operation that yields them "hundreds of millions of dollars annually in illicit profits". Not only it hurts the cattle owners, the activity is dangerous as it leads to deaths of the "perpetrators and innocent bystanders", states Palash Ghosh.
According to The New Indian Express, the villagers near the Bangladesh border state that cow thefts in the region increase before and during the Islamic festival of Ramzan and then these are smuggled across the border nearby. The Eid-ul-Zuha, or the Islamic festival of animal sacrifice, increases the demand for sacrificial cattle in Bangladesh and the illegal activity by the cattle smugglers across the porous border from West Bengal through Assam to Tripura, states The Economic Times. Indian border officials have been using various strategies to reduce or end the smuggling across the Bangladesh border. They allege that their Bangladeshi counterparts are not doing as much as they could, states Katy Daigle, to prevent "illegal cross-border smuggling" of cattle. In contrast, some Bangladeshi officials state that cattle smuggling and associated crime would end if India would accept cow slaughter and legalize cow exports for beef production in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh and India share over 4,000 kilometers of border, with many rivers, hills, highways and rural roads. The border is quite porous to goods and people movement. The border security is limited and cattle smuggling is a common crime, states Smruti Pattanaik. According to Zahoor Rather, trade in stolen cattle is one of the important crime-related border issues between India and Bangladesh. A 2017 Rajya Sabha panel led by the Congress leader P. Chidambaram criticized the West Bengal government for its failures related to rampant cattle smuggling to Bangladesh.
Impact on cattle theft in India
Government authorities and local residents in areas surrounding Bangladesh state that frequent cattle-smuggling across the border from India is causing an increase in Cattle theft in India and other crimes:
- According to a 2011 article in The Telegraph, "people living in the border areas in Dhubri district complained that unabated smuggling of cattle resulted in cattle theft".
- According to a 2016 report in The Tribune, "rampant smuggling to Bangladesh had triggered cattle theft in many parts of the state, especially in eastern Assam".
- In West Bengal, rival cattle smuggling gangs have killed and burnt people and cattle alive. According to Clive Phillips, stealing of cattle from northeast India is a source of the smuggled cattle and the operation is "rife with bribes, corruption and murders of rival smuggling gang members".
- A 2016 report by Soudhriti Bhabani states that Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, took official steps to "stop cattle stolen from across India ending up in Bangladeshi slaughterhouses, via the extremely porous border between the two countries". West Bengal is believed by experts, states Bhabani, as the "biggest hub for cattle smuggling because of the high demand for beef in the neighbouring nation."
See also
- 1966 anti-cow slaughter agitation
- Cow protection movement
- Cattle slaughter in India
- Cattle theft in India
- Cow vigilante violence in India since 2014
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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