Vigilantism Going Berserk

Karnataka has recorded its maiden death on Sunday at the hands of an extortionist gang masquerading as cow vigilantes. Circumstances make it evident that it was a cold blooded murder of an innocent person. The kingpin Puneeth Kerehalli is reportedly involved in several cases of hate speech and has robust links with leading politicians within the ruling party and the establishment.

Reports suggest that the victim and his associates were cattle traders, had purchased buffaloes against a receipt and were transporting them to Tamil Nadu for resale. The accused operated under the shadow of the Cattle Protection Law enacted in 2021. It is manifest from the FIR that their objective was to extort money while acting as cow vigilantes.

The victim was operating perfectly within the legal framework and had tried to convince the interceptors with his group’s credentials as genuine traders. Looked at from any angle, the gang headed by Puneeth Kerehalli has committed a hate-induced crime which needs to be probed and the accused needs to be prosecuted and punished accordingly. Coming as it does at the spur of the Assembly election, political motive of inflaming passion are too apparent to be missed.

The gang enjoying impunity seems to have been let loose to harass, extort and kill cattle traders with violence being the logical corollary which in all likelihood will benefit the ruling party seriously looking for divisive agendas. The kingpin with a controversial past has been facing several cases. Even while the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act 2020 empowers the authorities to take action against offenders, section 17 of the Act needs to be relooked at and amended as the cow vigilantes take shelter under its provisions.

The section under question says “no suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall be instituted against the competent authority or any person exercising powers under this Act for anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this act or the rules made thereunder.” The section provides opportunity, freedom and scope for unruly and anti-social elements to take law into their hands, intercept cattle being transported for purposes other than slaughter and misbehave, harass and in extreme cases kill the persons engaged in cattle trade.

As could be seen from the current case, the section has come handy for such vigilantes to scale up their role as extortionists and make a living through illegal exercise of authority, something that law neither intended nor permits. The authorities must wake up to the dangerous expansion of the ambit of the law and see that cattle preservation is not allowed to turn into a license to harass or kill cattle traders and into an opportunity to monetize what was meant to be a voluntary intervention.