Gurugram: The Haryana government has informed four special courts for fast-track cases under the Haryana Gauvansh Sankravan and Gausam Vardhan Act, 2015, which bans cow slaughter and controls the transport of cattle.
The move is amid increasing criticism from the opposition on poor implementation of cow protection law across the state, especially in Muslim-Bahul areas like NUH.
In January this year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court also expressed deep concern over the enforcement of the 2015 Act, given that the increasing number of cases under the law reflected its flawed implementation.
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Hearing a bail plea under the Act, Justice Sandeep Maudgil saw that the primary purpose of the law was to prevent cow slaughter and beef consumption, which is run by a powerful meat lobby in the sale and consumption of beef for personal gain.
However, a sharp increase in litigation under the law indicates that the Act is not being implemented in its real emotion, the judge said.
According to a notification issued on March 4, the jurisdiction of NUH, Palwal, Ambala and Hisar Special Courts will be spread in many districts.
Nuh Court will cover Nuh, Rewari, Naranul, Charkhi Dadri and Bhiwani. Palwal Court will cover Palwal, Faridabad, Gurugram, Jhajjar, Rohtak, Sonipat and Pinipat. Similarly, the Ambala Court will cover Ambala, Panchkula, Yamunnagar, Kurkshetra and Karanal, and the Hisar Court will cover Hisar, Jind, Kaithal, Fatebad and Sirsa.
The courts will be led by senior most additional district and sessions judges and civil judges of the respective districts.
Haryana’s stringent cow conservation law is imprisoned up to 10 years for slaughter of cow, and for seven years for smuggling cow. The 2015 Act prohibits cow smuggling, possession or beef consumption and sale of canned beef.
According to official data, in the second half of 2022 in the NUH district, only only 94 percent of the 69 registered cases were convicted showing the acquitted rate of 94 percent.
The district, mainly set up by Meo Muslims, has seen several examples of lynching on allegations of cow slaughter over the years. In 2023, A religious procession The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Matra Shakti were organized by Durga Vahini, allegedly by hundreds of youth of the Meo Muslim community, left six dead more than 70 injured, and the property of several crores was damaged.
In some cases under the Cow Protection Act, the court observation has highlighted the lack of adequate evidence in the prosecution claims. In an example, the decision clearly stated that the fact of an accused being a Muslim is that he could not automatically say that he was transporting cows for slaughter.
Talking to Theprint, NUH’s Congress MLA ATFAB Ahmed alleged that most of the cases in the district were registered only without adequate evidence as the accused was from a minority community, and several accused were acquitted due to the allegations.
Nuh district, which has the highest number of cow slaughter cases in the state, is Muslim-devotion.
Ahmed claimed that instead of using a law against powerful beef lobby, it is often armed against the minority community, which leads to arbitrary arrests and long -term legal battles for the poor people of the Mewat region.
“Special courts cannot make this difference because the current courts are already listening to cases and the accused has been acquitted only because they were incorrectly implicated. It is a well -known fact that the wholesale business in beef is done by those who do not belong to the minority community, but our people have been designed for cow slaughter for political reasons since the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), “the MLA said that.
Sharavan Kumar Garg, president of Gau Raksha Ayog of Haryana Government, however, said that special courts will help in improving the sentence.
“When we have four special courts for cow protection law, where we have trained public prosecutors in various aspects of these laws, the sentence is bound to improve the rate,” Garg said.
“Only a few months ago, a court in NUH convicted two people for cow slaughter, and sentenced them to imprisonment for nine years with a fine of Rs 90,000, as the public prosecutor performed the case well. We hope that with special courts, the public prosecutors will be able to prose in the criminals well. ,
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)