Puneeth Kerehalli, the prime suspect in the murder of cattle transporter Idrees Pasha in Karnataka’s Ramanagara, was arrested along with four others on April 5, five days after the crime. But the sequence of events preceding the murder points to police complicity in enabling Hindutva extremists in Karnataka, which is likely to have led to Idrees’s death. TNM travelled to Ramanagara and Mandya districts which are reeling from the incident, and what we found here raises suspicions of police connivance in this horrific crime.
The testimony of an eyewitness to the incident is perhaps the most glaring evidence that the police were aware that Puneeth Kerehalli and his men were assaulting the cattle transporters. Ateeq, who was travelling to his village from Mysuru on the night of March 31, happened to pass by the Sathanur Circle. This was where Puneeth’s gang had stopped the truck, just 500 metres away from the Sathanur police station. Ateeq recalls stopping in his tracks on witnessing a commotion that night. Ateeq told TNM that it was around midnight when he saw a stationary truck at the Circle, with Puneeth standing in front of it.
“The truck’s engine was still on, but the men who were in it seemed to have run away by then. Puneeth was recording a video on his phone. He was also telling the police, who were on the opposite side of the road, that this was a truck with cows and they should book the men in the vehicle,” Ateeq said. He said he watched the drama of Puneeth going live on Facebook unfolding in front of him. On the night of the murder, Puneeth had posted a Facebook Live video, boasting that he was carrying an ‘item’, speculated to be a stun gun.
Ateeq said he also saw Puneeth giving instructions to the police personnel. A few minutes later, as he was leaving the location, Ateeq said he heard a scream from a spot around 100 metres from the police station.
The truck that was waylaid by Puneeth Kerehalli and his associates on the night of March 31 was being driven by Syed Zaheer. The extremists handed him over to the Sathanur police, who booked Zaheer under the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act and arrested him. Zaheer said that he and the others in the van, Idrees and Irfan, were transporting cattle bought by farmers to be sold in market fairs in other states. Zaheer’s family insists that he even had documents to prove that the cattle were purchased from a local market, but that did not deter the Hindutva gang from attacking them. Zaheer said the extremists handed him over to the police after assaulting him, resulting in injuries. The police chose to book Zaheer but did not act against Puneeth, who had allegedly assaulted him.
TNM visited the Sathanur police station and asked the personnel there if they were aware of the assault on Zaheer and Idrees. They claimed that usually, there are not more than five police personnel at the station during the night shift, and that they were unaware of what exactly transpired on the night of March 31. When we asked them pointed questions about whether Zaheer spent that night in the police lockup, and whether he was injured before then, the Sathanur police said they did not know the exact details. They continued to dodge our questions when we asked whether they saw the commotion outside the station when Puneeth stopped the truck, and whether they were aware of the assault on Zaheer and his companions.
But the eyewitness testimony is enough to raise questions about how the police could have possibly missed the pained screams that Ateeq had heard so clearly.
Wasim Pasha, a distant relative of Idrees, said that the three men were transporting cattle from one market fair to another after buying it from farmers. Wasim was one of the first persons to reach the spot where Idrees’s body was found on the morning of April 1. He alleged that even before the night of the murder, Puneeth and his gang had accosted Idrees and his associates, and tried to extort Rs 2 lakh from them. However, since they were in possession of the purchase documentation, the cattle transporters refused to pay. “On the night Idrees was killed, Zaheer was also beaten with cricket bats and wicket stumps before being handed over to the police. [Puneeth and his associates] got the police to register a case against Zaheer. They also chased Idrees Pasha and assaulted him. I saw the injuries and burn marks on his body. Puneeth used a ‘shock gun’ on him, and he had previously even posted videos of himself using it to attack cattle transporters,” Wasim said.
Questions over the use of a stun gun or a taser on Idrees have been asked several times in the past few days. So far, the police have failed to explain why Puneeth — who had been posting videos of his attacks on cattle transporters on his social media pages, and even used a stun gun in one video — was not arrested sooner. In India, stun guns and tasers are considered to be prohibited arms under Section 25 (1A) of the Indian Arms Act.
The nexus between Hindutva extremists acting as cow vigilantes, and the police, emerged more clearly after Suresh, an advocate who is associated with a Hindutva group called Azaad Brigade, explained how they operate. Suresh said that Puneeth was gaining popularity in the “cow vigilante circles” lately, especially after he started posting videos of his attacks on Facebook. When asked how Suresh and his associates operate, he said that they have an extensive network of informers across Karnataka who keep track of the movement of vehicles carrying cattle. Once they receive information on the location of such vehicles, cow vigilantes attack the cattle transporters and hand them over to the police. “There are some police officers who cooperate with us very well. We know which ones comply, and we call them to help us,” Suresh told TNM. He said that even if the transporters possess purchase documents and other necessary paperwork, the extremists stop them because the transporters often herd more cattle than allowed under Karnataka’s anti-cattle slaughter law.
The Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Act, 2020, enacted in 2021, includes provisions that have empowered and facilitated Hindutva goons to target cattle transporters. As the case of Idrees Pasha’s murder indicates, it appears that the Karnataka police are giving a long rope to such offenders, who indulge in communal crimes under the garb of cow protection.