GANDHINAGAR (The Thursday Times) — A sessions court in India’s Gujarat state has sentenced three Muslim men to rigorous life imprisonment for slaughtering a cow and possessing beef, with the judge quoting Hindu scripture, including the Manusmriti, to describe the cow as “the mother of the universe”.
Additional Sessions Judge B.R. Rajput of the court in Kalol, Gandhinagar district, convicted Vasim Kureshi of Juhapura, Mahmad Rafiq Kureshi of Behrampura and Asfak Bahelim of Fatehwadi on Monday under the Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Each was also fined ₹300,000, according to the Gujarati news site DeshGujarat.
Police arrested six people after raiding a house in Jamla village on August 22, 2024, and seized 277 kilograms of beef valued at about ₹55,000, along with knives allegedly used to slaughter the animal and a vehicle meant to carry the meat, prosecutor Jignesh Joshi said. The court convicted three of the six.
‘Mother of the universe’
Reading out the sentence, the judge said a cow was “revered as the mother of the universe” in whom 330 million deities were believed to reside, and that protecting cows was “an act related to religion and compassion”, the Hyderabad-based outlet Siasat reported.
“Despite knowing that a cow is like a mother, they were trying to sell beef after slaughtering it,” Rajput said, adding that if such offenders were not given the punishment prescribed by law, “the cow will disappear from the face of the earth.”
The reliance on the Manusmriti has drawn sharp criticism. The ancient text is widely condemned for codifying caste hierarchy and the subordination of women, and critics said quoting religious scripture in a sentencing order sits uneasily with the secular framework of India’s constitution.
Life for a cow
Gujarat amended its cattle protection law in 2017, under then chief minister Vijay Rupani, to make cow slaughter punishable by up to life imprisonment, one of the harshest such laws in India. Courts in the state have since begun handing down the maximum term: in November 2025, a court in Amreli district jailed three members of one family for life in a separate cow slaughter case, a ruling the state government hailed as historic.
Rights groups say beef bans and cow protection laws in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have been used disproportionately against Muslims and lower-caste communities, many of whom work in the cattle and meat trade, and have emboldened vigilante groups behind a series of lynchings over the past decade.
