A month after it was pulled up by Allahabad HC, Sitapur police closes ‘cow slaughter’ case

A month after the Allahabad High Court pulled up the Sitapur police over a case registered under the UP Cow Slaughter Act in February, the police submitted a final report in the matter to a local court and closed the case. In a hearing on May 17, the court had found that the provisions of the Act were wrongly invoked against the applicant, 22-year-old Suraj. The court gave the police two weeks to file its reply. It also granted bail to Suraj, who was booked on February 25 under sections 3 and 8 of the Act along with three others – Ibrahim, Anish and Shehzad. Suraj was in jail since the case was registered. A police officer in Sitapur told The Indian Express on Friday that following the High Court’s observations, a fresh investigation found “no evidence against the accused”. As a result, the case was closed, And a final report was submitted to a local court. “The final report was submitted to a local court after a direction came from the Allahabad High Court. In its order, the High Court took up certain issues with the matter, and later, the matter was closed and a final report was filed in a local court,” he said. Superintendent of Police (SP) Rakesh Prakash Singh declined to comment on the matter as “it was pending in the court”. During a hearing on Wednesday, the Additional Government Advocate (AGA) submitted that he would file a report in compliance with the May 17 order within a day. The court gave a week’s time to Sooraj’s lawyer Dilip Kumar Yadav to respond to the AGA report. The matter has been listed for hearing on June 24. On February 25, an FIR was registered against the four accused, Based on the police complaint, it was alleged that one of his team had overheard a conversation between the accused about killing three calves. According to the FIR, based on a tip-off, the police team “carefully apprehended the above persons and heard them talking among themselves in the bushes that they had killed three calves and received huge amount of money”. And now they had two bulls in their possession and planned to kill them too. After perusing the FIR, the court said, “It clearly emerges that the bulls found in the possession of the applicant were neither slaughtered nor maimed or had suffered any bodily injury.” On May 17, the court said that she “dissociated from the case” after granting bail but “it is in the interest of justice that she should be transferred to the Superintendent of Police, Instruct Sitapur to file his personal affidavit regarding the statements made in Along with the bail application it also indicates how cognizance of Sections 3 and 8 of the Act, 1955 has been taken against the applicant. The court also observed that the applicant remained in jail for more than two-and-a-half months on the basis of the sections framed against him, which “would not be prima facie attracted in the said incident”. .