GURGAON: A student making a late-night trip to a mall to have noodles. And a group of cow vigilantes parked on a road, looking out for cattle smugglers. How did the two unrelated entities converge?
As the question of why Class 12 student Aryan Mishra was chased 29km from Faridabad to Palwal and shot at point-blank range by cow vigilante Anil Kaushik and his aides on Aug 24 hangs around the investigation into a crime that has once again brought armed ‘gau rakshak’ networks under the lens, sources said the answer may lie in a likely motivated tip-off.
Kaushik, according to sources involved in the investigation and in Haryana Gau Seva Ayog, may have acted on a false tip-off, planted by rivals of one of Aryan’s companions that night.
Aryan had gone to Vardhaman mall with his landlady, her sons Harshit and Shanky, and their neighbour Kriti Sharma.
Anil Kaushik, the main accused in murder of Aryan Mishra, has been an active ‘gau rakshak’ operating on highways around Delhi and Gurgaon and is a member of the official cow protection task force in Faridabad.
On Kaushik’s complaints, cases have been registered under Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act (HGSSA) in at least two police stations in Faridabad since May 2024. In FIRs, filed in cases of alleged cattle smuggling and slaughter, he is identified as a member of the special cow protection force of the Haryana Gau Seva Ayog. He is a police witness in another cow smuggling case registered on Dec 30, 2023.
Although police maintain that the role of gau rakshaks and the task force is restricted to giving tip-offs and enforcement of law and order is out of their purview, the FIRs suggest Kaushik had been acting well beyond his ‘informer’ remit and was actively involved in chasing down “suspicious” vehicles and intercepting them, which is police’s job. ‘Gau rakshaks’ are also not supposed to carry firearms.
But Kaushik is neither the first, nor the only one to do it. Other cow vigilantes like Monu Manesar – who was arrested by Rajasthan police for his alleged role in the murders of two men from Bharatpur, Nasir and Junaid, by cow vigilantes in Feb last year – have also been involved in chases and interceptions.
Before Aryan’s death, private ‘gau rakshak’ networks have repeatedly come under the scanner. Nasir and Junaid’s killings and the death before that of Nuh resident Waris Khan, who succumbed to injuries sustained in an accident after he was allegedly chased by cow vigilantes, are the most recent examples.
In the early hours of Aug 24, Kaushik and four other vigilantes did what they are used to doing when they went after the Duster Class XII student Aryan and his neighbours, who had gone to a Faridabad mall late night to have noodles, were in.
The pursuit is believed to have been based on a tip-off that there was beef in the car. In their Swift, they followed the Duster for 29km from Faridabad to Palwal on the Agra highway, firing once. When the Duster with an injured Aryan stopped, they fired at Aryan again, this time from point-blank range.
In a case filed at Mujesar police station on May 30 against Arif – who was injured after being beaten up at the scene – and Mahipal under HGSSA, the complaint from Kaushik, quoted in the FIR, reads, “I am a member of the special cow protection force (Haryana Gau Seva Ayog) and a permanent member of Live for Nation Organisation. We received information from a friend, Adesh Kumar, that Arif and Mahipal were taking cows from Sarurpur to Madalpur to slaughter. We intercepted them on Sarurpur-Madalpur road and rescued a cow. Arif, who was walking with the cow, was caught by us, but Mahipal, who was following him on a bike, abandoned the vehicle and fled from the spot. Despite our best efforts to prevent it, locals beat up Arif.”
At 2.30am on Aug 22, Kaushik claimed to receive an alert from an informant that cattle smugglers were loading cows into a pickup van near Pyali Chowk in Janata Colony. “I also received a video related to the incident and, along with my team, rushed to the spot. But before we reached there, three to four accused managed to load two or three cows in their pickup van and fled. I tried my best to trace them but couldn’t. Please take appropriate legal action,” Kaushik wrote in his complaint, after which police filed a case in Saran under HGSSA section 13.
On Dec 30 last year, Sanjay Colony police post ASI Vijender Singh and his team received a tip-off about cow smuggling at Shyam Nagar Phase-2. “We asked passersby at Sarurpur Chowk to become witnesses, and Anil Kaushik from Parvat Nagar Colony agreed to become a witness. Along with the raiding party and public witness Anil Kaushik, we set up nakabandi and spotted five men bringing two cows from Shyam Nagar Phase-2 Sarurpur side. On seeing us, the accused fled the spot, abandoning the cows,” the ASI wrote in the FIR.
Vice-chairman of Haryana Gau Seva Aayog Puran Yadav confirmed to TOI on Wednesday that Kaushik has been a member of the Faridabad cow protection task force for a year. “They have a mandate to pass on information about cow slaughter and smuggling to police,” said Yadav, adding the investigation about what happened on Aug 24 would bring out the truth.