IN WHAT indicates that cattle smuggling from India to bangladesh has been effective tackled, cattle seizures along the eastern borders have dropped sharply over the past few years. Latest data available with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) shows that cattle seizures by the Border Security Force (BSF) on the bangladesh border were just 20,415 till November 2021 compared with 1,53,602 in 2015.
Data of last seven years shows 2018 was a turning point when cattle seizures dropped almost 50 per cent to 63,716 compared with 1,19,299 in 2017. The numbers dropped sharply over the last two years: 46,809 in 2019 and 20,415 in 2021.
Since it gained power in May 2014, the BJP-led government has put a special focus on protection of cows and countering cattle smuggling.
In 2015, addressing BSF personnel at a border outpost in West Bengal, then Home Minister Rajnath Singh had said he wanted the force to crackdown on cattle smuggling so severely that Bangladesh would quit eating beef.
Since then, the force has deployed extra personnel to round-the-clock monitor the border and stop cattle smuggling. It has acquired more speedboats to chase smugglers transporting cattle through the rivers. It has also taken coercive action through lethal and non-lethal weapon firing on such trans-border criminals. Last year, in an official statement, the BSF called cattle smuggling an act of “sedition”.
Sources in the BSF, however, said there were other reasons for the sharp drop in cattle seizures….
