Bhopal: Among the 11 houses bulldozed in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandla Saturday over allegations of cow slaughter and illegal construction were the houses of Akeel Ahmad and his two brothers, Asif and Adil.
Their father, Jaleel Ahmed Qureshi, said that the police visited Akeel’s house two days before the demolition drive, drank water from the fridge, and conducted a search of the house. Jaleel claimed that the police found nothing, and yet the houses of his three sons were razed.
Akeel, Asif and Adil, along with eight others, have been booked under section 4, 5 and 9 of The Madhya Pradesh Govansh Vadh Pratishedh Adhiniyam, 2004. According to Superintendent of Police for Mandla district, Rajat Saklecha, the FIR was registered after enough evidence was found with cowhides kept in the back, and bones and beef stored in the refrigerators of these homes.
Of the 11 houses demolished by the Mandla district administration, seven belonged to members of Jaleel’s family, including his sons and other relatives. Jaleel has accused the villagers of hatching a conspiracy and targeting his family over a land dispute.
“My uncle Rafeeq Ahmed is fighting a battle for the ownership of 103 acres of land. Due to the animosity, our family is being targeted with fraudulent inputs by some members of our community, who got in touch with some local reporters and fed the police with wrong information to get us ousted from the land,” he told ThePrint.
Mandla District Collector Saloni Sidana, however, said, “The said parcel of land is notified as government land meant for grazing. The homes constructed there have been given notices over time. In fact, in this case, prior to the police action, the families were served notices as per the due process.”
She told ThePrint that other illegally constructed homes on the land would also be demolished following due process of law.
According to Jaleel, a truck carrying some cows was intercepted near Dithori village in Mandla last week and, based on the statement of the driver, the police had come to investigate cow trade in the Bhainswahi area.
“The police were brought to our locality by this incident, but we had nothing to do with it,” he told The Print. He claimed that his son Akeel was into scrap trade, and had nothing to do with cow slaughter.
Jaleel said that the inspector visited the village Monday and asked him to present his three sons to the police station, saying that a case had been filed against them for alleged killing of animals.
Asiya, wife of Mateen, one of the 11 accused, told reporters, “When the police came to our house to investigate, they did not find anything. They admitted that there was nothing in the house and said that we could go to sleep. But the next morning, about 10 police personnel came and made us sign some papers forcefully. We kept pleading to the village elders and sought their help, but no one came forward.”
She added that the sarpanch, in fact, pointed to the houses and got them demolished.
Speaking to reporters, Jesaan, another villager whose house was demolished, alleged that, “The police gave us no opportunity to remove our belongings… We have been walking around for the past three days in the same pair of clothes.”
“If the houses were illegally constructed, all the houses in the locality should have been demolished. Why were only our homes targeted and demolished? Where will we go with our young daughter?” he added.
Dismissing the allegations of Jaleel’s family being targeted over the land dispute, Saklecha told ThePrint that it was true that the police had intercepted a vehicle carrying cows at Dithori and the issue was taken up on priority.
However, he added that five cases had been filed in the past against people of the same village for cow slaughter, and the police had been tipped off about cows being purchased on a large scale from the village mela, which led them to conduct the raid.
“When the police reached the villages, Wahid (one of the accused) spotted the police and began to run. He was chased and caught, while men from other houses escaped, leaving women behind,” said Saklecha.
He added that the police recovered weapons and tables used for cow slaughter, beef stored in refrigerators, along with bones and cow hides in these homes.
“Not all from the locality were involved. The neighbours had pointed out that they themselves were scrap dealers, but the accused were involved in cow slaughter. Based on the evidence recovered from these homes, an FIR against the 11 was registered. Their homes were subsequently demolished as they were constructed on government land allocated for grazing,” Saklecha told The Print.
He said that cow fat, used for food adulteration, was recovered from the homes. The bones, he said, were being used for animal fodder, and cowhide was being sold to other markets.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)