Mob torches PCR van after truck with carcasses found

“Around 1 pm on Friday, the control room at Kherki Daula police station received information about blood flowing from a jacked up Tata 407 at NH-8. A PCR van from the police station reached the spot to find carcasses of nine cows and one live cow on the truck”, SHO of Kherki Daula police station said.  Police said a group of youths, armed with lathis and stones, gathered in the area to set fire to the truck and blocked traffic on the national highway.

The PCR van, which reached the location and tried to stop the mob, was set ablaze. The van driver, Bijender Singh, was beaten up, police said.  Police said a case has been registered against the driver of the truck under the Animal Cruelty Act. The persons involved in setting fire to the PCR van and assaulting the van driver have been booked.
“The truck, bearing an Uttar Pradesh registration number plate, is suspected of smuggling the slaughtered cows,” the SHO said.

Police said a veterinary doctor was called to the spot to treat the wounded cow, which was later taken to hospital. The dead cows were buried near Rampura Village, Gurgaon, police said  Later in the evening, senior police officers of Kherki Daula police station called a meeting of municipal councillors and sarpanches and appealed to them to maintain peace in the area. “No arrest has been made and efforts are being made to identify the miscreants,” the SHO said.

Last year, a similar incident was reported near Dharuhera, where villagers had torched 16 trucks transporting cattle and blocked the Delhi-Jaipur highway the whole day, leading to massive traffic snarls.  Besides the trucks, the mob also damaged and torched nearly a dozen Haryana and Rajasthan Roadways buses which were stuck on the blocked highway.

The violence erupted two days after a youth was murdered allegedly by a gang of rustlers in Gurgaon’s Vaaspur village.  According to police, stray cattle caught by the Chandigarh administration was being shifted to Barsana Gaushala in UP. However, villagers mistook them for cattle smugglers and went on a rampage.