Activists of the RSS-backed student outfit Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) descended on an area in Varanasi city a day before Ramzan where goats are sold and claimed illegal slaughters took place there in the vicinity of the Kashi Vishwanath temple.
The Muslim organiser of the seasonal market at Chetganj, where thousands of traders come to sell goats, said there was no slaughterhouse in the area, nor was meat sold there. Police said the goat market had municipal permission and that animals were not slaughtered there.
According to Varanasi Nagar Nigam rules, no animal can be slaughtered within a 2km radius of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, nor can meat be sold. The market, however, trades in live animals.
On Tuesday, over two dozen workers of the ABVP held a day-long protest in the area where the goat market is organised, allegedly misbehaved with locals and went to the local police station to mount pressure on cops to “shut down the slaughter market in the proximity of the Kashi Vishwanath temple”.
Responding to a complaint from Shivam Tiwari, an ABVP leader at Kashi Vidyapeeth, Chetganj police registered a case against unidentified people for “running an illegal goat slaughter market” but later found that there was no such facility or activity in the area.
“There is an old goat market earmarked by the Varanasi Nagar Nigam. It is legal. We found that there was no slaughterhouse or slaughter market in the area. The allegations were false,” Gaurav Banswal, the deputy commissioner of police, told reporters on Wednesday.
Mohammad Nadeem, who organises the market, said the ABVP activists banged on the doors of residents of the area and shouted “Jai Sri Ram”. They threatened to resort to violence if the residents did not vacate the area, he said.
“We organise a goat market here on different occasions. There are houses on both sides of the road. Everybody was surprised when these youths started behaving aggressively. Later, the police came and searched each and every premise in the area,” Nadeem said.
“They came to me and asked me to prove that we live here legally and that the market is legal. They cross-checked our statements with the Nagar Nigam. The scene was such on Tuesday that we thought we would be thrown out of our houses,” he added.
The traders who come to the market are mostly Muslim. Many minority community members live in Chetganj.
Vijay Kumar Shukla, the police inspector of Chetganj, said: “A goat died here a few days ago. This could be the reason why some people were confused. The protesters had wrong information.”
Nadeem said a goat brought for sale had indeed died, but had not been slaughtered. “This market is more than 100 years old,” he said.
A resident who didn’t want to be named said the police should have taken action against the protesters for breach of peace and disturbing communal harmony but they were offered tea at the police station.”
Tiwari, the ABVP leader, said: “We still believe something wrong is going on there. The police must investigate the matter properly.”
Forest encroachment
The administration has cleared encroachments blocking around 300 bighas of forest land in Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur district, ploughing standing crops during the drive, police said on Wednesday.
SP Rajesh Dwivedi said the farmers had converted forest land into agricultural fields, where they had been cultivating crops for 74 years.
