It is no coincidence that the states with the most militant Hindutva groups also happen to be electoral strongholds of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Telangana presents a strange exception to this trend, where the influence of Hindutva activism on public life exceeds the BJP’s power in elected bodies. At no time of the year is this Hindutva influence more apparent than during the annual Eid Al-Adha or Bakrid festival, when cow protection groups run amok on the state’s highways, in search of vehicles carrying cattle headed for ceremonial slaughter.
There has been a slew of incidents over the years where Hindutva vigilantes have harassed and attacked Muslim cattle transporters, often with the assistance of the police. This in a state where an avowedly secular Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) is in power with informal support from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). Interestingly, attacks by cow vigilantes have gone up by all accounts ever since the BRS and its informal ally, the AIMIM, came to call the shots in the newly formed state in 2014. This year, things have come to such a pass that a Muslim vigilante had to threaten a counterattack for the police to finally protect hapless traders from the cow protectors.
On June 16, Friday, Mohd Mushtaq, a local truck driver from Hyderabad, set off in his Ashok Leyland trolley to transport four oxen from Zaheerabad district (bordering Bidar in Karnataka), which is about 100 kilometres away, to the city. With Bakrid just about two weeks away (falling on June 29 this year), he knew that his odds of running into trouble were high, and his worst fears came true. Just before Mushtaq was about to enter Hyderabad near Patancheru (around 30 km away from the city), self-styled cow vigilantes or gau rakshaks began chasing him. Things could have gone very badly from there, but he had a lucky escape.
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Mushtaq received help from Amjed Ullah Khan, who heads the Majilis Bachao Tehreek (MBT), a Hyderabad-based Muslim political party that aids Muslims targeted by Hindutva groups. Warning cow vigilantes of repercussions, Khan had been making statements over the last few weeks daring them to disrupt the cattle trade. His statements, which created a ripple, appear to have had an effect on the police, who have been clamping down on militant activities of Hindutva groups such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal to avoid clashes.
“In our case, because we called Amjed Ullah Khan, the police reached our location soon and ensured our safety. But I was forced to pay Rs 2000 to one of the gau rakshaks who said we can ‘quietly’ settle the matter, before the police arrived,” Mushtaq told TNM. Other cattle traders in Hyderabad also have similar tales to tell. Most often than not, drivers run away after being stopped by cow vigilantes due to fear of violence.
Cows at a cattle market in Hyderabad set up ahead of Bakrid
Despite the tense situation, the AIMIM, headed by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, has barely made a statement. In 2021 however, Owaisi had written a letter to the then Director General of Police (DGP) M Mahender Reddy asking him to curb the “alarming situation” of cow vigilantism in the state before Bakrid. The AIMIM’s lukewarm response to the issue, perhaps owing to its delicate ties with the ruling BRS, has clearly vacated a political position that Amjed Ullah Khan’s MBT is trying to occupy.
K Narender Reddy, Inspector of Police at Ramachandrapuram police station, told TNM that Mushtaq was booked for violations under the Telangana Prohibition of Cow Slaughter and Animal Preservation Act, 1977, while members of Bajrang Dal were also booked for wrongful restraint. The Inspector stated that both sides had lodged complaints against each other after the incident, based on which the cases were registered. “Only the police and Road Transport Authority (RTA) have the powers to stop vehicles. Nobody else can,” he added.
Other cattle traders TNM spoke to over the past week alleged that their vehicles transporting cattle are often intercepted by vigilante groups. They usually chase them and cause a ruckus before eventually getting the animals impounded by the police. In most cases, the cattle are seized because the vehicles are overloaded or because the transporters fail to produce a fit-for-slaughter certificate from a local veterinary officer.
Cattle transporters and traders have also alleged physical assault by cow vigilantes who often thrash drivers after intercepting their vehicles. The vehicles, according to traders, are sent mostly to privately owned cow sheds or gau shalas in Hyderabad or anywhere close by, depending on where the vehicles are intercepted.
“Once cattle are impounded, they are sent to privately owned cow sheds. Once they’re in the shed, you can forget about the animals. They never return them even if the trader goes to court. This happens all year round, but gets highlighted only before Bakrid due to the VHP making statements in the media. Otherwise, we suffer all year,” said Hashim Qureshi, a cattle trader from Hyderabad.
Hindutva groups in the state had been raising a shrill pitch on the issue of cattle slaughter, which has now grown louder. They also continue to draw large crowds for Ram Navami or Hanuman Jayanti rallies, which are communally provocative in nature. The VHP especially began raking up the issue three weeks before the festival. On Monday, June 26, VHP members even submitted a memorandum to Telangana DGP Anjani Kumar, which included a demand to stop arresting their members.
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Though the state police have been on high alert for the past few weeks, to rein in Hindutva groups and cow vigilantes to avoid communal clashes, the fact is that cow vigilantism has grown right under the BRS government’s nose.
The BRS overlooked cow vigilantism in the initial years after coming to power, seemingly to avoid being branded anti-Hindu. “But now, these [vigilante] groups seem to have understood that they have a law that can easily be used politically to help further the Hindutva agenda here, which helps the BJP,” said a political analyst who did not want to be named.
Though the BJP is not in power or even close to it in Telangana, it has been strongly pushing for a Hindutva agenda and has often attacked the BRS claiming that the party is anti-Hindu, or pro-Muslim. Instead of countering it with a secular pushback, the BRS has often tried to project itself as more pro-Hindu than the BJP.
For the BJP, the campaign against cattle slaughter during Bakrid is perfectly in line with its push for a host of other polarising Hindutva issues including Hyderabad’s military annexation of India in September 1948. The Ram Navami rallies in Hyderabad, often marked with hate speech by BJP MLA Raja Singh, have been growing in size every passing year. In all this, the BRS is often seen taking an ambivalent stance.
It may be recalled that even before the BJP and other Hindutva groups gained a foothold in Telangana after it attained statehood in 2014, many accused the BRS government of bias in the case pertaining to University of Hyderabad (UoH) research scholar Rohith Vemula who died by suicide on the campus in 2016, alleging caste discrimination by the administration. The then vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile, then BJP MP Bandaru Dattatreya, and former BJP MLC Ramchander Rao were all booked, but no one was arrested and the case has since hit a dead end. A few months after the VC returned to campus, post Rohith’s demise, the state police brutally cracked down on protesting students and arrested many of them.
One reason why the BJP has not been able to tarnish KCR’s image with the “anti-Hindu” jibe effectively is due to the fact that KCR has positioned himself as a devout Hindu. Many view the BRS supremo as someone who talks of being secular, while tacitly promoting a majoritarian religious agenda through the state’s patronisation of Hindu institutions, be it the construction of the Rs 1200 Yadadri temple, or through sops for Brahmins.
It is only this year, over the past two weeks, that due to fear of communal clashes and upcoming state Assembly elections, the Telangana police began seriously clamping down on Hindutva cow vigilante groups and their leaders. Hyderabad Police Commissioner CV Anand on June 21 also held a meeting with different government departments and warned vigilante groups against stopping vehicles on their own.
Police officers from Hyderabad and other districts whom TNM spoke to also attested that cow vigilantism became a bigger menace in Telangana after 2015.
“A spike was witnessed from 2015-16. We get calls within five minutes if we are not responsive (to their complaints). These ‘Hindu Samaj’ (Hindutva groups) people are very well networked. They have lawyers and advocates everywhere who come and put pressure on us in almost every case as they have support from the BJP-led Union government,” said a police officer who earlier worked in the old Warangal district jurisdiction. (After the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, four districts were carved out of this region.)
The cases against cattle traders are mostly booked under the Telangana Cow Slaughter Act. Police officers TNM spoke to said that vehicles are mainly stopped for overloading of cattle or for transporting them without a government veterinary certificate that permits one to slaughter cattle (for Bakrid or otherwise).
Over the years, due to pressure from Hindutva groups, the Hyderabad, Rachakonda and Cyberabad commissionerates which overlook the Greater Hyderabad areas have started to set up checkposts a few weeks before Bakrid to scrutinise incoming vehicles carrying cattle. These checkposts are set up at various points in all police station limits, even within the core city limits, and have been a norm for around a decade. The practice began after large-scale Hindu-Muslim riots erupted in 2010 following a dispute over the removal of religious flags in the Old City area.
“It happened as Milad-un-Nabi coincided with Ram Navami or Hanuman Jayanti. That year, cow vigilantes began thrashing Muslims who were bringing in cattle. That led to the police eventually setting up these checkposts to check cattle brought for Bakrid without any permission. However, this also causes inconvenience, as policemen should have proper orientation to carry out such checks,” said Hyderabad-based activist SQ Masood.
The job of the police is only to check the unauthorised transport of cattle for which they can book people under the Telangana Cow Slaughter Act. While there is no official order per se, cops seem to have received the tacit go-ahead from the state government to increase the number of checkposts, especially now, due to the rising menace of vigilantism.
A police checkpost to monitor vehicles carrying cattle, in Hyderabad's Chikkadpally
Cattle traders said the police checkposts are not an issue. They, however, alleged that in cases where vigilantes accost them, the latter are seldom booked by the police. “In most cases, the truck or trailer drivers are thrashed and our animals are taken away or seized. If the police booked VHP members or those belonging to similar groups after such incidents, then things wouldn’t have come to such a pass,” said a trader from Old City in Hyderabad, adding that this had been their experience for the past eight years.
Police officers said they were ready to register complaints against Hindutva groups if the driver who is transporting cattle lodges a complaint. “Many of them run away due to fear and the owner of the cattle is the one who is booked for animal cruelty under the Telangana Cow Slaughter Act,” said the officer from Warangal district. Officers from across the department had to educate themselves about the Act over the last eight years after cow vigilantism began growing in Telangana, he said.
While the police maintain that no one is allowed to take the law into their own hands, officers at the lower levels said the pressure from Hindutva groups, who have support from the BJP, is immense even in minor cases involving cattle transportation. In 2020, the Rachakonda police also came under fire from secular groups after a few RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) members were seen questioning people on roads at a checkpoint during the COVID-19 lockdown.
One senior officer said that though the police department reports only to the state government, right-wing groups have close ties to Union ministers from the state. Any low-level police officer would think twice before disobeying a Union minister, he said.
“In my two decades of service, there was never an issue before Bakrid. It is from 2015-16 that we have been seeing this. We get calls from powerful people within five minutes if we are not responsive,” said a police officer from Mahabubabad district.
He said that until 2015-16, the police did not pay much attention to the situation. “All this started mostly after the BJP came to power at the national level in 2014. Normally, the drivers and cattle traders do not file a complaint as they are technically in the wrong. The main issue is with wrongful transportation,” the officer said.
Apart from prominent outfits like the VHP, other groups are also on the ground. This year the Telangana Goshala Federation headed by advocate and activist Mahesh Agarwal demanded that the city police ramp up its checkposts before Bakrid. When asked about his cow protection work, Agarwal however claimed he had nothing to do with gau rakshak groups and said that the police should strictly implement the anti-cow slaughter laws of the state.
Even as early as October 2014, shortly after Telangana’s formation, Agarwal had raised the issue with the then Deputy Commissioner of Police in Hyderabad (South Zone), V Satyanarayana, who warned both cattle traders and vigilantes to not do anything unlawful.
In Hyderabad, due to the cow vigilante menace, Muslim clerics in the past have made appeals to the community to avoid slaughtering cows or if they do, to not do it openly during Bakrid to avoid communal tensions.
Local cattle traders and transporters from Hyderabad and Telangana said that due to cow vigilantism, Muslim traders have to hire trucks and drivers that are operated by other private parties who charge around Rs 30,000 for around half a dozen cattle at a go. “We end up having to pay Rs 3000 or more per animal for protection. This is one reason why the price of cattle for Bakrid has been going up,” said another trader. This year, the minimum price of an ox is around Rs 22,000. Big animals are sold for upwards of Rs 50,000, said traders.
“This year, after the Majlis Bachao Tehreek got involved, the police have become stricter and these gau rakshak groups are wary of being booked. Generally, only transporters or traders get booked. Not only that, we also lose our cattle and have to bear losses. How is it that they only stop us for transportation and ask us for certificates at this time around Eid, but others (including livestock farmers) who come to sell their cattle don’t undergo such scrutiny?” asked Hashim Qureshi, a trader from Hyderabad.
Officials from the Animal Husbandry Department and the police had no answer to the question posed by Hashim. Police said during other times of the year, it is up to the Animal Husbandry Department to issue fit-for-slaughter certificates. “Nobody is going to ask farmers any questions, not even the cow vigilantes, because they will face repercussions,” said a senior police officer from Hyderabad.
In the predominantly Muslim areas of Hyderabad’s Old City, which makes up most of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s south zone, slaughtering cattle for Eid has been a norm. Butchers from the city, none of whom wanted to be identified, told TNM that for their own safety, cattle slaughter is now being done in big open spaces covered with tall temporary walls.
“Slaughter still happens but there are more restrictions. The problem isn’t the police, but the pressure from Hindutva groups. There is a risk until the animals reach Hyderabad. After that, we just have to be discreet in case any right-wing group attempts to create a ruckus. Two decades ago, slaughter would happen on the streets as well, but because of communal clashes we decided against it,” said one of the butchers.
Hashim Qureshi, and other traders TNM spoke to, said that they never know what happens to cattle after they are sent to private gau shalas, hinting that the animals are eventually sold illegally. Slaughter, though banned for all cattle, can still be done if a state government veterinary officer issues a certificate allowing it.
A gau shala in Hyderabad's Dhoolpet area
“There are many private gau shalas, but the biggest one is at Ziaguda run by Kalu Singh, who is the right-hand man of BJP MLA Raja Singh. Even if you get a release order, they will never return your cattle on some pretext or other. Or they will ask you to pay dues for keeping cattle at the shed. They impose about Rs 300 per animal per day. If five of your animals are kept there for two months, then it is Rs 1500 per day for 60 days,” said another trader who preferred anonymity.
When TNM visited Kalu Singh’s residence at Dhoolpet, his wife and family members said that he had left home due to the police keeping a tab on him. “He was doing good work,” his wife insisted. A senior police officer from Hyderabad said that “troublemakers” have been detained or taken into custody this year to avoid any communal conflagrations.
Speaking to TNM, VHP functionary in Telangana Pagudakula Balaswamy said, "Farmers invariably sell a cow when it is old and cannot be used for cultivation. At such a time, traders buy the cows with the sole purpose of slaughtering them. This is illegal and even the police are not taking strict action against it." Further, Balaswamy denied that cattle are sold illegally from gau shalas. "If such a thing happens, strict action should be taken against gau shalas as well,” he said.
A cursory look at the law regulating the slaughter of cows or cattle in Telangana shows that it can be misused by religious fundamentalists as it prohibits the slaughter of all cattle, including buffaloes. The Telangana Prohibition of Cow Slaughter and Animal Preservation Act, 1977 names “bull, bullock, buffalo, male or female, or calf, whether male or female of a she-buffalo” as protected categories.
The definition of a cow according to the Act “includes a heifer, or a calf, whether male or female, of a cow.” Under section 4 of the Act, the state government can appoint any person or a body to act as a “competent authority” for local areas.
“The Government may, by notification, appoint a person or a body of persons to perform the functions of a competent authority under this Act for such local area as may be specified in such notification.” — Telangana Prohibition of Cow Slaughter and Animal Preservation Act, 1977
Telangana Goshala Federation head Mahesh Agarwal, who claims to have campaigned against cow slaughter for many decades, showed TNM a gazette notification issued in 2006 by the then Congress government, appointing him as a “competent authority”.
Under section 9 of the Act, such “competent” persons have the right to inspect and enter any premises where they “have reason to believe that” any offence under the Act is committed. “The government does a background verification and only then gives us this position,” Agarwal told TNM, and showed a list of persons like himself who he said were given such permissions.
However, an AIMIM functionary TNM spoke to said this was “mischief” on the part of state government officials. “How can any non-state government actor be made a competent authority? They were lying low back then, and it is now only that all of this is coming back to the fore. But they have no official sanction,” he added.
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In tune with that, a Government Order (GO) dated June 26, 2013, from the then Andhra Pradesh government, notified various officials such as Chief Veterinary Officers, Assistant Directors, Veterinary Assistant Surgeons and other officials from the Animal Husbandry department as competent authorities in municipal corporations and rural areas. The list had no mention of non-governmental persons being appointed to the position. How somebody like Agarwal got the appointment is a mystery.
The GO also outlined that the competent authority shall issue ‘Certificate A’ (certifying the cattle as fit for slaughter) only if any cattle has become uneconomical for breeding or draught, or any kind of agricultural purpose, or if it stops giving milk, or if it is over the age of 14. Hence, the Act has a slight leeway for cattle slaughter only if animals have no economic purpose, or if it is beyond a certain age.
“A separate GO was passed prohibiting the slaughter of all animals under the age of 14 years. The laws are actually pretty strict when it comes to cows. Most of what traders bring in are bulls or oxen these days, so cow slaughter is out of the question. The state laws are also pretty stringent in that sense,” said a Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation official, who did not want to be named.
Leo Augustine, advocate and a former member of the Janata Party (which was formed as an anti-Congress front after the Emergency in 1977), recalled the Cow Slaughter Act being passed “without any application of mind” by the then Congress government in Andhra Pradesh (1974-78).
“There were Jan Sangh members in the Janata Party, who were pushing for this agenda, and this was opposed by socialists like Madhu Limaye. The Congress passed it without much commotion or thought. Any government in India has a Hindu mindset for the majority vote bank. So they passed it for that,” said Augustine.