Vehicles illegally transporting cattle seized after activists receive tip-off

COIMBATORE: Nine trucks found transporting 216 cattle, including cows and buffaloes, were stopped and seized at Avinashipalayam late Tuesday night. The police booked the trucks for transporting cattle, violating the motor vehicles act and the prevention of cruelty against animals act.
The vehicles included seven trucks, one minivan and one tempo traveller.Eighty of the 216 cattle rescued were healthy cows, and the remaining were bulls. Activists from the Coimbatore Cattle Care Welfare Trust who received a tip-off about a large number of cattle being driven to Kerala, posted themselves along Avinashipalayam. "The first truck with around 34 cattle came in at around 11pm, and the remaining eight vehicles turned up by 1.15 am," said S Nizamuddin, a member of the trust.
None of the vehicle drivers had a valid bill of sale, a trip sheet by the person selling the animals or a medical certificate from a veterinarian certifying the animals to be fit to travel. While cattle welfare activists insist that the vehicles carrying the cattle were headed towards Kerala, police seemed convinced that the drivers were only headed to Pollachi. "All the vehicle drivers and assistants in the vehicles were Malayalees and one of the trucks even had a Kerala registration plate," said Nizamuddin.
The police inspector in Tirupur who filed the FIR early Wednesday morning confirmed the incident but said they could only take the drivers' version. "The drivers claimed that they were transporting the animals from Erode, where they were taken for the Karungalpalayam weekly market, to Pollachi for the weekly cattle market there," he added.
The trucks were finally seized and were produced before the magistrate court on Wednesday afternoon and the animals are likely to be sent from Tirupur to the Vellingiri Goshala in Narasipuram. "The goshala has just received a call from the police, so we assume it is going to be sent there," said Nizamuddin.
The trucks were booked for violating the prevention of cruelty against animals act, 1960, and the Motor Vehicles Act which allows only six animals to be transported in a truck. "They are also supposed to have a bill of sale from the previous owners of the animals, details of where the animals are headed to and medical certificates issued by a veterinarian stating that the animals are fit to travel," said Dawn Williams, general manager, Blue Cross of India.