A novel attempt to identify the real owner of a cow in Jhabua

The ancient wisdom of Solomon being reprised in India is indeed heartening, though the focus is a lost cow. The habit of bovines to slowly but unerringly wend their way home as the sun sets is well known and, indeed, counted upon by their owners who often leave them to do so everyday quite unsupervised. However, a cow in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district clearly did not live up to the standards of her fellow ruminants by disappearing on her way home one day. It was also not surprising that when she was eventually found a few days later, there were two claimants, leaving the police perplexed about who the real owner was.

Obviously, the lack of incontrovertible proof of ownership complicated matters for the law enforcers, but the solution that has now been decided upon appears foolhardy given the cow’s demonstrated propensity to act unlike her species. Indeed, to bank upon the supposedly innate sense of loyalty of bovines by leaving her in an open area to see who she heads for appears unduly optimistic. Do cows have more sense than other stolen property? After all, she could head for neither and aim for greener pastures, as is the wont of many who are not even herbivores. Surely, DNA proof, as the court ordered on a similar dispute in Kerala, appears to be a more scientific though less entertaining solution.