Cow smugglers, slaughterers will be thrashed to death: Rajasthan BJP MLA

Jaipur: Known for making controversial statements, Rajasthan’s ruling BJP MLA Gyandev Ahuja once again finds himself in the spotlight for saying that cow smugglers and slaughterers are bound to be killed.

Mr Ahuja’s threat came as a response to an alleged cow smuggling incident reported in Alwar district on Saturday.

“Mera to sidha sidha kehna hai, ki gau taskari karoge ya gau kashi karoge to yun hi maare jaoge (I say this clearly, if you smuggle or slaughter cows, you will be killed),” he told reporters.

Not a stranger to making controversial and bizarre statements, Mr Ahuja in Feburary last year claimed that the premier Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi was a hub of sex and drugs, where 3,000 used condoms and 2,000 liquor bottles were found daily.

Instead of retracting his statement, two months later he again dubbed JNU a place of criminal activities where rapes take place on a daily basis.

Mr Ahuja also came up with a unique idea of dealing with black money. “Whenever someone offers it to me, I ask them to spend it on some good cause, like on the upkeep of temples and gurdwaras… I also give them a receipt,” he said.

The legislator, with an RSS background, represents the Ramgarh constituency in Alwar, the hotbed of cow vigilantism where three Muslim dairy farmers have been killed in less than a year in violence involving cow vigilantes or police encounters.

Born in 1950, Mr Ahuja is a BA (Ist year) and had been a journalist at one point of time. He had invited actress Poonam Dhillon to join a road show during his election campaign in Ramgarh.

On Saturday, a man identified called Zakir Khan was arrested in Alwar for cattle smuggling after he was pulled out of his truck and beaten by villagers.

Earlier, the police had tried to stop Khan’s truck, in which there were eight cows, but he allegedly drove through the barricades. The police also claimed that those in the truck fired at them. Later, villagers managed to stop the truck and attacked Khan while two of his accomplices managed to an away.

However, Mr Ahuja claimed that the accused was injured after the vehicle in which he was allegedly smuggling cows overturned.

“Three men were smuggling cows. When police chased them, they tried to escape through narrow lanes of a village and the vehicle overturned leaving one of the smugglers injured. Two others managed to escape,” the Ramgarh legislator claimed.

Mr Ahuja said that there has been a sudden spurt in incidents of cow smuggling of late.

“More than 100 incidents have occurred in the past a few days, which is alarming and unusually high. Police are also doing their job to check such incidents,” he said.

Circle Officer, Alwar South, Anil Kumar said that Zakir Khan was arrested for smuggling cows. He was beaten by villagers before the police took him in custody.

“Earlier, a police party tried to stop the mini-truck but the accused fled after opening fire at the police. There were 8-10 bovine animals in the truck,” Mr Kumar said.