West Bengal BJP’s ‘Goraksha’ cell busy protecting cows during Ramzan

KOLKATA: Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s cow protection cell are extremely busy in Bengal’s districts, keeping tabs on the number of cows, especially in the month of Ramzan. Apart from listing out the “benefits” of protecting a cow, they are crisscrossing the state, trying to make people “aware” that they shouldn’t kill a cow, and have even filed FIRs across districts complaining that cows that are “not fit for slaughter, are being taken to the slaughter house”.

The cell is focusing mainly on two states — West Bengal and Kerala — where beef is not banned. “We are very occupied during this month. In the past four weeks, we registered at least 785 FIRs and mobilised around 560 volunteers to keep an eye on cow smuggling and slaughtering across most of the border villages,” said Subrata Gupta, state president of BJP’s ‘ Goraksha’ committee.

The volunteers visit every house in the village, list the number of cows that the households have, and in case of a disappearance, look into the reasons as to how the cow was being smuggled out. They mention the addresses, number of cows, and names of the suspected smugglers.

“However, in some areas, the police are not cooperating. They are taking the names of smugglers but listing them as absconders,” Gupta said.