On the complaint filed by Animal Welfare Officer, Animal Welfare Board of India, Bengaluru THREE cold storage units in Auto Nagar were closed down and now the police acting upon it for the first time has arrested three owners of such cold storage’s.
Press release issued by the Commissioner of police, says Along with three cold storage units namely 1) Seven Star Group 2) Neil Agro Factory 3) Srushti Agro and Cold Storage another 5 have been identified by the police and they are 4) M/s Barfawala Cold Storage & Agro Processor 5) M/s Barfawala Foods & Agro Processor 6) Charish Agro and Cold Storage 7) Fiza Exports 8) S. B. Traders.
The police is currently investigating the matter and samples from other units have also been taken and sent for examination.
A special officer RR Kalyanshrrit ACP, has been appointed to investigate this matter.
Mobin Bepari, Minaz Chandshaikh and Nayeem Yakub have been arrested by the police. The investigating officer is also investigating the 14 owners of the other 5 cold storage units.
The Belagavi city corporation has also issued notices to the illegal slaughter houses operating in Kasai Galli, and has asked them to be shut immediately orelse action would be initiated.
Amol Mohandas, owner of Srishti Cold Storage that was closed down by Belagavi police here on Tuesday on the charge of stocking beef and meat in violation of rules, has denied the allegations. We don’t run a slaughterhouse. We own and operate a cold storage. It stores meat, apart from other goods. We have all the necessary permits and licence. We have obtained permission from the district administration he said in a press conference.
While the raids on these alleged illegal slaughter houses is welcome, the timing of the raids and the arrests are very interesting. These abattoirs may not have sprung up over night, nor a few months back, they were there in existence since several years, and concerned the authorities about them all these years, now that the elections are round the corner, for the powers that might be, their sense of smell which was frozen all these years has suddenly become active and gone sniffing the stench. This is nothing but opportunistic politics, exploiting the situation to serve their own vested interests for scoring some brownie votes.