The Bengal Opposition is celebrating the arrest of Trinamul Congress strongman Anubrata Mondal in a cattle smuggling case.

If Mondal, who is also accused of a role in postpoll violence and involvement in coal smuggling, is guilty, the law should take its course.

Yet a closer look suggests that in Narendra Modi’s new India, where legislation and vigilantism has made it hard for farmers to sell unproductive cows for slaughter, culpability for incentivising or conniving with crossborder cattle smuggling is spread wider than one state or individual.

Slaughter ban

After coming to power in 2014, the BJP-led central government pushed for a nationwide ban on cattle slaughter. But it had eventually to leave it to the individual states on account of electoral concerns because several states had significant beefeating populations.

With cow slaughter banned or tightly regulated in at least 20 states and Union Territories including Delhi, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, the country’s stray cattle population has grown, bringing its own problems such as highway accidents.

Several experts have spoken about the damage stray cattle have caused to the farm economy, not least by destroying crops.

And the farmers — banned from selling cattle for slaughter in some states and faced with a threat from vigilantes if they transported them elsewhere for sale — are forced to sustain unproductive cows with food, water and medicine at a time their incomes have been dwindling steadily.

As cows are considered sacred by most Hindus, no political party has demanded relaxation of the restrictions on slaughter and sale.

“Unless there is a system of disposal of unproductive cattle, a decision like banning their slaughter will only trigger perverse outcomes,” said Vikas Rawal, professor of economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU, New Delhi

“If an animal has to be maintained as long as it lives by providing it with water, fodder, medical care and shelter, it’s the end of the cattle economy.... Right now, farmers don’t know how to dispose of unproductive cattle and they are even paying for their disposal. In this way, the system is creating perverse incentives for someone to use the porous borders and send them where there is a market for cattle.”

That the stray cattle will find a market — in this case beyond the borders — is but pure economics, said a Calcutta-based social scientist who refused to be identified.

Rawal said that bovine vigilantism was actually resulting in a worse outcome for unproductive cattle.

“Instead of the least painful (ways of) slaughter, cruel and crazy things are happening to unproductive cattle,” he said, alluding to the manner in which cattle are collected from various parts of the country, transported to the borders and smuggled out.

Sources said the cattle are often tied up, jampacked into trucks and transported over hundreds of miles without enough food or water before being brutally pushed or hurled across barbedwire fenc¬ing. “You can keep discussing smuggling, those who are behind it and the kickbacks they earn. But what is the alternative? What is the disposal mechanism?” Rawal said.

Sources privy to the way the illegal cattle trade is run said a cow — depending on size and quality — is worth Rs 40,000 to Rs 70,000 at the point of origin. On top of this, the middleman who buys the cow from the farmer pays between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 to those who would do the actual smuggling. In Bangladesh, each cow sells at Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1.2 lakh.

BSF

As the cattle are smuggled across an international border guarded by the BSF, which reports to the Union home ministry of Amit Shah, the question that arises is: how many agencies have got their hand dirty over the racket?

In any case, large consignments of cattle from across the country — even from BJP-ruled states — reach Bengal before being smuggled to Bangladesh, traversing large swathes of these Indian states whose administrations are unlikely to be unaware of what’s happening.

A retired IAS officer with long experience of serving in Bengal’s districts said the smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh, via Bengal, from various states of the country is many decades old, as are most of its routes.

He said that efforts to get the Bangladesh border in Bengal fenced had begun since Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1984.

“Bengal shares a 2,100km border with Bangladesh, of which around 400km comes under the South Bengal Fron¬tier of the BSF. Porous areas of this zone are used for cattle smuggling,” the former bureaucrat said.

A source said there are a dozenodd key points in Bengal such as Pandua (Hooghly), Illambazar and Rampurhat (Birbhum), and Suti and Samserganj (Murshidabad) where cattle brought from other states are stocked before being smuggled to Bangladesh.

“Cattle from states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand are brought to these points by road before they are smuggled out across the Padma from Suti and Samserganj to Chapainababganj in Bangladesh,” a source said.

Another point of crossing, across a narrow canal, is at Angrail, North 24 Parganas, on the other side of which is Jhikargachha in Jessore, Bangladesh, the source added.

“Getting the cattle to Bengal across vast swathes of northern and other eastern states cannot take place without the knowledge of the police and other security agencies of those states, besides those of the Centre,” he said.

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamul national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee have raised these questions repeatedly in the past. But the embarrassment of Mondal’s arrest and the current public mood may cause them to stay silent, at least for now.

Trinamul spokesperson Samir Chakraborty has demanded that the Enforcement Directorate or the CBI sum¬mon senior BSF and Customs officials immediately, saying crossborder cattle smuggling is impossible without their connivance.

“One must wonder how the cattle are smuggled across the international border without the knowledge of the BSF? The last time I checked, the BSF was under the Union home ministry,” Chakraborty said.

The Enforcement Directorate had indeed arrested Satish Kumar, former commandant of the 36 Battalion of the BSF, earlier this year as part of a probe into cattle smuggling.

Kumar’s arrest had come after the agency filed a chargesheet against key accused Mohammad Emanul Haque and former Trinamul youth wing leader Vinay Mishra.

“What about the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence? Besides, all international borders ought to have Customs (checking), which is under the Centre,” Chakraborty said.

“The central probe agencies should summon officials of all these central agencies as well if they have any intention of conducting a free and fair investigation.”