While Calcutta High Court’s Justice CS Karnan, sentenced to jail for contempt by the Supreme Court, remained out of reach of the law, Rajasthan High Court judge Mahesh Chandra Sharma pronounced an ‘order’ on the day of his retirement that the cow should be made the national animal.

With the nation yet to come out of the double shocks, a Hyderabad High Court judge said the cow was a “sacred national wealth“ and a “substitute to mother and god“.

Justice B Siva Sankara Rao was hearing a petition by cattle trader Ramavath Hanuma. Sixty three of his cows had been seized from him and he wanted them back in his custody. A trial court in Nalgonda had rejected his petition and he had moved the high court challenging this order.

Hanuma had taken his cattle to Kanchanapalli village, from where they were seized. While Hanuma claimed that he had taken his cattle to graze, the prosecutor claimed that he and two accomplices had bought the cattle from farmers for slaughter. They also claimed that Hanuma intended to distribute cow meat during Bakrid.

On June 9 the judge heard the petition and quoted from a Supreme Court order, saying it was a settled legal position that Muslims had no fundamental right to insist on the slaughter of healthy cows on Bakrid. In rejecting the petition, the judge also said that veterinary doctors in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (the court has jurisdiction over both states) are intentionally certifying healthy cows as unfit to give milk and sending them to slaughter houses. The judge said these doctors should also be punished under the AP Cow Slaughter Act, 1977. He directed that the act should be amended to make such offences non-bailable and cognisable.

The judge refused to change the lower court’s order. He then made his comment in his order: “Is a person entitled to claim interim custody of cows and bulls seized from him when he was allegedly taking them to a slaughterhouse? This question needs to be posed and answered in view of the national importance of cows, which are substitutes to mother and god.”

Quoting from history, he said Emperor Babar saw the wisdom of prohibiting the slaughter of cows as a religious sacrifice, and directed his son Humayun to follow the example. He added that emperors Akbar, Jehangir, and Ahmad Shah also prohibited cow slaughter.

It may be recalled that Justice Mahesh Chandra Sharma, post his retirement, had met the media and said that peacocks are pure, because they don’t have sex. He said peacocks reproduce through their tear ducts. If a peahen drinks a peacock’s tears, it gets pregnant. This has generated enough mirth in society, to last a lifetime.

—India Legal Bureau