A day after Gujarat Assembly passed a stricter law with provisions of life imprisonment for cow slaughter, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Saturday said those who kill cows ‘will be hanged’.
The Chief Minister was responding to a query on whether his government was also bringing a stricter law against cow slaughter in Chhattisgarh on the lines of Gujarat.
"Chhatisharh mein aise hi kahan gowadh ho raha hai. Ho raha hai kya? Aaj tak 15 saal mein kisi gai ko nahi maara hai. (No cow slaughter is taking place in Chhattisgarh anyway. Is it? No one has killed a cow in last 15 years),” the CM remarked.
“Maarega usko latka denge (Will hang those who kill cows)," Raman Singh said.
His statement comes amid an ongoing crackdown on slaughterhouses in Uttar Pradesh besides other BJP-ruled states such as Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh. Bihar became the first non-BJP ruled state to crack down on illegal slaughterhouses.
Raman Singh had enacted a law to ban cow slaughter in the very first year after assuming office in December 2003.
The smuggling of cattle attracts imprisonment up to seven years and a fine of Rs 50,000.
Last year, Agriculture Minister Brijmohan Agrawal had informed that the Chhattisgarh government had been strictly enforcing the law banning cow slaughter in the state where about 31,000 cattle had been rescued from animal smugglers in the past 12 years.
Chhattisgarh was the first state in the country to enforce the law in letter and spirit to ban the slaughter of cows, buffaloes and their progeny, Agrawal had said.
