UP: Cattle phobia grips transporters, the police escort dying cow to vet

Jyoti Singh, 24, finally heaved a sigh of relief on Sunday after police escorted her dying cow Moni to a veterinary hospital for specialised treatment.

Afraid of “gau rakshaks”, none of the truckers was willing to transport the ailing bovine to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) in Bareilly. For the last three weeks, Jyoti had been making frantic appeals to everyone from DM to PM Narendra Modi besides phone calls to several local officials in civil administration to facilitate specialised treatment for Moni, which was injured in the leg in September.

Over 150 tweets and retweets to the PM, CM, Home Minister, BJP Chief Amit Shah and senior officials by Jyoti who reportedly left a cushy corporate job in Gurgaon to do organic farming in her Bulandshahr village, elicited no response.

The ailing cow is reduced to a skeleton, with festering wounds on her entire body. On Saturday, it was taken to a local private veterinary centre. However, the X-ray could not be done because of her size. On November 2, some government veterinary doctors visited Jyoti’s house and advised her to take Moni to Indian Veterinary Research Institute, The Times of India (TOI) reported.

After the story appeared in TOI on Sunday, Meerut senior superintendent of police (SSP) Manzil Saini called up Jyoti and arranged a vehicle to shift the cow to Bareilly under police protection.

“Two police constables will be sent in the vehicle and I have also requested a veterinary doctor from the animal husbandry department to go along,” Saini was quoted as saying.

Jyoti’s story, however, is not an isolated case. The poor dairy farmers in UP have been facing similar problems. Most of the truckers are said to be scared of cow vigilantes and deny ferrying cattle.

Earlier, speaking to local media, Jyoti lashed out at gau goons: “Gau rakshaks are goondas. All they can do is bullying. If truckers are not willing to ferry my cow to the hospital, gau rakshaks are to be blamed. They are afraid of being attacked by gau rakshaks.”