Anatomy of an activist raid & rescue of illegal transportation of cattle for slaughter in New Delhi (Part 2): Aug 23, 2014

The text describes the situation of 2 successive activist raids on June 22 & 23 and on Aug 23 in New Delhi in which the activists manages to salvage the lives of 300 livestock being smuggled in 12 trucks driving through the heart of New Delhi. Over 10 people were arrested while others escaped.

• Pictures: Abhinav Srihan. Pictures are used with permission by VoSD. All pictures have been used as is with enhancements only for low light conditions or contrast.
• Text: Mohit Sanghal. Text is used with minor edits for clarity.
• Prior published reading on VoSD on illegal cattle transport and slaughter here
• This is Part 2, Part 1 of the article can be seen here

Activist raid in New Delhi on illegal transport for slaughter of buffaloes.

Once again we all decided to raid these trucks transporting buffaloes and cattle to the slaughter houses in August as we also wanted to see the impact and changes made after such a big raid in July. It was afternoon of 23rd Aug that we all decided to meet at 10 pm but this time the target location was South district of New Delhi which is supposedly the entry point for these trucks from Haryana and Rajasthan.

We were a group of 15-20 volunteers (most of them were from the first raid) and decided to raid at the busy Ring Road off Moolchand Underpass next to South Extension where we saw a lot of trucks passing while we were driving on the opposite carriage way to the meeting point.

Activist raid in New Delhi on illegal transport for slaughter of buffaloes.

We split in two groups. One who were supposed to stop the trucks carrying cattle and we were supposed to inform on a radio about the probable carrier from a distance. Abhinav Srihan was trailing a truck from almost 3 km and stopped it right where the volunteers were positioned and to our horror it was overloaded with buffalo and calves. As responsible volunteers we made a call to the Police on ‘100’ number and informed them about the movement.

After the call no truck was spotted for next 35-40 minutes whereas we’d seen so many trucks pass just an hour before. It looked like someone had stopped the trucks much before our raid spot. We were about to get in the cars for our next location that we saw a truck speeding away on the main road filled with buffalo again so we decided to drive and flag him down. We trailed him for 2 kms and caught up with him. In next 3 mins we found another truck at the same place full of sheep almost 250+ sheep in a small truck from Rajasthan.

Activist raid in New Delhi on illegal transport for slaughter of buffaloes.

We got all these trucks back to the same spot where we were raiding and called the cops again, the cops came and orders were passed to take the buffalo and cattle to Sanjay Gandhi shelter at West Delhi.

To our horror the staff and the driver of one truck made a run for it so Vikas Raina. One of the volunteers decided to drive the truck back to the hospital where we offloaded over 100 buffaloes and calves and 250+ sheep till 8 AM in the morning along with the staff of the shelter.

The condition of these calves just can’t described in words, we saw a lot of prolapse cases (where the uterus of the female animal comes out of its body from the rear), buffaloes with broken limbs, broken rib cages, broken horns, a lot of them were already dead or died later on due to so many other .

Activist raid in New Delhi on illegal transport for slaughter of buffaloes.

Nothing had changed since July the transporters are sending over 500-700 such trucks stuffed with livestock to slaughter houses each and every night.

Will this cruelty ever come to an end? Why do we need to kill these innocent animals throughout their transportation thirsty and suffocating? They die every second before they even reach the slaughter house.