'Meat from Jaipur hotel not beef' - but we didn't need proof that cow vigilantes spread hatred
"The best lies are those seasoned liberally with religious dogmatism, just like salt covering the taste of rotten meat."
— Unknown, but certainly not a gau rakshak
The pieces of meat recovered from Hayat Rabbani hotel in Jaipur back in March, and sent to forensic science laboratory for examination were not beef, as suspected.
According to this Hindustan Times report, police officers have said that the lab that was examining the samples "ruled out any possibility that the meat was from a cow or its progeny".
“We sent the meat samples taken from the hotel to the forensic science laboratory for testing. The reports have revealed that the meat was not beef,” the same news report quoted deputy commissioner of police (west), Ashok Gupta, as saying.
A much-relieved Naeem Rabbani, owner of the hotel, said he stands vindicated.
“From the very first day, I have been saying that it was chicken but no one from the administration listened to me. The report confirms all allegations levelled on us were false,” the newspaper quoted him.
The fateful night
Around midnight on March 19, cow vigilantes had stormed into Rabbani hotel and manhandled the staff members in presence of the police, accusing them of serving beef.
For the record, slaughter of “cow, calf, heifer, bull or bullock” is prohibited in Rajasthan. As a result, the possession and transport of their flesh too are prohibited. Violators may face up to 10 years’ imprisonment and/or Rs 10,000 fine.
The blood-thirsty crowd was led by a self-styled sadhvi Kamal Didi, the national president of Mahila Gauraksha Dal. She had openly incited the crowd present there to teach a lesson to the hotel staff.
"I am not afraid to sacrifice my life for gau mata. I am ready to be with you in any protest or gheraos to teach the people of this hotel a lesson. But the residents of this colony will also have to participate and they shouldn’t back out at the end moment,” she had said.
The manager of the hotel who was initially taken into police custody was brought back among the cow vigilantes “to calm them down” and was manhandled.
Rabbani, who had held a press conference with his staff a day later, had said a "repeat of Dadri had been averted".
Although the police at that time had said that the meat "appeared to be chicken legs", the seized pieces were anyway sent to the forensic laboratory for testing "to placate tempers".
Subsequently, the hotel was sealed by the Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) after the incident. It's still shut despite a sessions court order, according to the hotel owner.
A rogue sadhvi
After a half-successful debut (to lynch) "beef eaters", Sadhvi Kamal Didi, made one more attempt to seal her identity as the leader of cow vigilantes in Rajasthan following the murder of a dairy farmer, Pehlu Khan, in Alwar.
She visited Bipin Yadav, one of the killers of Khan who was under arrest, and assured him that the whole of India was with him. She even compared the killers with Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh. "They have done nothing wrong".
After the latest development (that ruled out the possibility of beef in Rabbani case), the rogue sadhvi said: “I will speak with the police to verify that whether the forensic test of the meat sample has been done correctly or not."
The HT report said the 39-year-old gau rakshak told the newspaper that that she will decide the next course of action only after that.
What happens now?
Rabbani, continues to be miserable. With his hotel sealed for almost two months, he claims to have incurred huge losses. The staff members too went jobless as a result of Kamal Didi's "coup".
Interestingly, the hotel continues to remain shut even after the district and sessions court in Jaipur had issued an order on April 29 asking the JMC to open the hotel within seven days and submit a compliance report in the court.
“It’s been more than seven days now but the JMC hasn’t opened the seal,” Rabbani told HT.
The developments once again prove that we don't need to point out the futility of testing a piece of meat to establish the real motive behind such lynchings/attempts by cow vigilantes. Apart from the bloodthirst to kill Muslims, the easiest way to make them go hungry without job and money is to accuse them of eating/killing beef/cow.
What better way to wipe out an entire community than hitting their economic backbone?
There is little doubt that the entire system is complicit in such instances of vigilante justice by gau rakshaks, but still the insanity behind testing meat can never be justified.
In Uttar Pradesh's Dadri, when Mohammad Akhlaq was beaten to death by a hungry mob over suspicion of storing beef at his house in September 2015, the first thing that the police did was to send the meat to forensic lab to find out if it was or wasn't beef.
The authorities in UP who took the decision will go down in the history of gau raksha as the prime facilitators of crimes.
There is a strange perversity to the entire idea. No matter beef is banned or not in a state, no one can be killed for consuming it. But above all, did any of the governments ever find the need to declare a ban on killing human beings? Because the ongoing murders and attacks prove that the laws of the land are not enough to deter the bloodthirsty Hindutva goons.
But the biggest question now is will the self-styled sadhvi and the other assailants involved in the incident face any action?
Local journalists closely following the sequence of events believe otherwise. Not much, they say, could be expected to go in favour of Rabbani, especially with a BJP government run by staunchly right-wing ministers who are working overtime to impress their "real" heads in Nagpur ahead of the forthcoming Assembly elections next year.
Meanwhile, Kamal Didi and others like her couldn't be more hopeful of a rich political career — an idea turned into reality in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.