SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Aug 23: Cow protection activists seized a postal service van loaded with 40 cows on inter-state GT road (National Highway-2) near Kisan Chowk under Barwadda police station of the district at late night on Monday.
Officer in-charge of Barwadda police station Suman Kumar said that the van bearing two registration numbers was going from Aurangabad district of Bihar to Bengal when the group of cow protection activists chased and captured it at night.
The seized cows were handed over to Katras Gaushala for cattle’s care. “Two persons including the driver of the parcel van is being interrogated,” the OC said.
Anand Kumar, the leader of the cow protection group, said that after getting a tip-off and numbers of the vehicles being used for cows to be smuggled to Bengal from Bihar, they began vigil on GT road at Kisan Chowk. At around 1 am, a van was spotted and as they indicated it to stop, the driver sped up towards Bengal. However, they chased the vehicle by bikes and caught the driver.
“We immediately tried to inform the officer in-charge of Barwadda police station but he did not receive the call. DGP control room was also informed but we did not get any response. Though NH-2 patrolling party reached the spot immediately but the officer refused to take possession of the seized van and the cows. Finally, in the morning today we brought the van at Barwadda police station and handed it over to the officer in-charge.”
The OC later sent the van at Katras Gaushala after completing the formalities to avoid loading and unloading problem.
Notably, the inter-state NH-2 is considered main route of cow smugglers to send the cattle to Bengal from different districts of Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Since cow protection groups have become active after 2014 on the NH and rescued several cows being being transported in covered trucks, the cattle smugglers have changed their strategy .
Now rather than carrying the cattle on trucks, the smugglers use postal service vans to mislead the activists.
“All cows looked like they had stopped giving milk and were being transported to Bangladesh through Bengal,” said Anand Kumar.
