Compensate victims of cow vigilantism: SC

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 22 

The Supreme Court today said states were under obligation to compensate victims of violence by cow vigilante groups. A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said states must frame schemes to compensate victims of crime, including those of cow vigilantism, as envisaged under the Code of Criminal Procedure. 

Noting that law and order had to be given primacy, it said anyone violating the law must be dealt with sternly. 

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The top court asked states and UTs to comply with its September 6 order to appoint nodal officers to deal with cow vigilantism by October 31. 

The direction came after the Bench was informed that only five states — Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh — had filed a compliance report. Activist Tehseen S Poonawalla and Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, have moved the top court to seek directions to states to check cow vigilantism. 

On behalf of the petitioners, senior lawyers Kapil Sibal and  Indira Jaising raised the issue of murder of Junaid on a train in Faridabad allegedly by members of a cow vigilante group. The Bench declined to take it up, saying an individual case should not be clubbed with the larger issue. 

With cattle traders, transporters, dairy farmers and meat traders at the receiving end of cow vigilante groups in various parts of the country, the Supreme Court had on September 6 asked states to appoint a senior police officer in every district as a nodal officer to stop violence in the name of cow protection. 

“The senior police officer shall take prompt action and will ensure vigilante groups and such people are prosecuted with promptitude,” it had said, adding the nodal officers must ensure that cow vigilantes did not become a law unto themselves.