Amreli/Banaskantha (Gujarat): “Their home is locked. They left the village after what happened in November last year. They don’t talk to anyone now,” said Imran Pirzada, a local of Mota Khakivad village in Amreli town.Pirzada is referring to the Solanki family – three members of which were given life sentences for ‘cow slaughter.’On November 6, 2023, the police raided the home of the two brothers Kasim and Akram, and their uncle Sattar, allegedly after receiving a tip-off. Police claimed to have found beef, remains of a slaughtered calf and slaughter equipment. On November 11, 2025, the Amreli Sessions Court convicted them under the Animal Preservation Act, and ordered them to pay a combined fine of Rs 18 lakh.Holy cow and hate crimesOn February 25, two Muslim men were brutally attacked by cow vigilantes over the allegation that they were transporting buffaloes in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar. The attackers had rammed their truck into the vehicle, causing serious injuries to the men. No dead cattle was found on the scene.“It reminded me of what happened to my husband,” said Jeeviben Khan, the widow of Mishri Khan, who was beaten to death in the Deesa village of northern Gujarat’s Banaskantha district in May 2024 by iron rod-wielding men, who claimed to be ‘gau rakshaks’ or cow protectors. Khan did not have dead cattle or cattle remains on him either. He was only out to deliver two buffaloes to his sister after purchasing the animals from a Banaskantha cattle market. The accused men were booked for murder, wrongful restraint, criminal intimidation and criminal conspiracy, but later most of them were released. Out of the five accused, one continues to be in prison and four were let out between six and seven months after being jailed in May 2024. Jeeviben, who is partially blind and a single mother to four, is afraid of letting her kids out of their impoverished home. That most of those involved in the crime roam free compounds her fears. “I survive off of whatever my relatives contribute. Sometimes, we don’t eat when there’s no money. Even today, my youngest daughter has a high fever, but I don’t even have the auto fare to take her to the doctor. They killed our breadwinner,” Jeeviben said when this reporter visited her in the Nava Sesan village of Banaskantha in mid-March.Mishri Khan’s widow, Jeeviben Khan sits with her four children in Banaskantha district’s Nava Sesan village. The faces of the minor children have been blurred in accordance with Indian laws on juveniles. Photo: Tarushi AswaniJeeviben wanted to legally pursue the re-arrest of the four who were released. But elders in her family advised her against it. Nava Sesan is a Muslim-majority village and is surrounded by three Hindu-majority villages. “They would not let us live in peace,” she said.Khan’s elder brother Sher also told The Wire that the environment in Gujarat is not conducive for Muslims to even engage in poultry or animal husbandry. “We have not slaughtered cattle, but we are always guilty because we are Muslim,” he said. Sher said that militant Hindutva groups like Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad routinely intervene in cattle transport and trade, often with violence. Even when no crime is established, he explained, the risk of detention, violence, or loss of animals has been enough to kill the business. The consequences fall most heavily on Muslim communities and nomadic groups, for whom cattle rearing has traditionally provided income and stability.In November 2022 too, a sessions court in Gujarat’s Tapi District, convicted and sentenced one Mohammed Aameen for offences under the Gujarat Animal Preservation Act of 1954.“Cow vigilante groups in Gujarat have created an atmosphere of fear. Muslim cattle traders are routinely targeted through extortion, violence, and even killings. Those who try to resist or continue their livelihood are pushed further into vulnerability,” social activist and advocate Hozefa Ujjaini said. VotesIn May 2014, Narendra Modi assumed office as India’s 14th prime minister. Not long after, reports of incidents of violence over “cow slaughter” began to climb. In June 2014, Mohsin Shaikh, a young Muslim IT worker in Pune, was beaten to death by Hindu extremists — the first of several lynchings that followed. A year later, in 2015, a Hindu mob in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, killed Mohammad Akhlaq on suspicion of eating beef. The incident made global headlines and signalled the rise of cow-protection vigilantism. By 2016–17, assaults on Muslims accused of trading or transporting cattle spread across northern India, with cases like the lynching of dairy farmer Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan. A Muslim nomadic woman sits outside her tenement in Gujarat’s Vijapur. Photo: Tarushi AswaniIn 2017, Sadhvi Saraswati, a preacher with the Sanatan Dharm Prachar Seva Samiti, called for public execution of those who ate cow meat. In 2017 itself, Gujarat’s state assembly passed a law making the slaughter of cows punishable with life imprisonment. Since then, after the 2017 amendment to the state’s Animal Preservation Act, those found guilty of transporting beef are to be jailed for 10 years.While many states already had bans dating back to the 1950s-70s, the states which implemented and amended their laws post-2014 ushered a wave of stiffened legislation, and in this wave, what makes Gujarat unique, is that it is the only Indian state where those found guilty of cow slaughter can be imprisoned for life. Maharashtra led this wave in March 2015 by adding bulls and bullocks to the list of animals banned for slaughter, followed by Haryana in November 2015, which introduced ten-year prison sentences. In 2015, then-Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said, “Muslims can continue to live in this country, but they will have to give up eating beef”. This momentum culminated in March 2017, when Gujarat amended its laws to make cow slaughter punishable by life imprisonment, positioning itself as the state with the most extreme penalties in the country. After the amendment to its cow protection laws to increase punishments, Pradeepsinh Jadeja, the Gujarat’s minister for home affairs, said, “We have equalled the killing of a cow or cow progeny with the killing of a human being”.The trend toward stricter enforcement continued into the current decade, with Karnataka implementing a near-total ban in February 2021 and Assam passing legislation in September 2021 that restricted cattle slaughter near temples and specific residential areas. By January 2022, the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu aligned its local laws with the severe Gujarat model, also imposing life imprisonment and heavy fines. Most recently, the focus has shifted toward centralized control; the introduction of the Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill, 2024, and the Cow Protection Bill, 2025, signals a push to establish a National Cow Protection Authority. These efforts aim to implement a uniform “Qualitative Cow Dignity Index” across India, effectively transitioning cow protection from a state-level mandate into a comprehensive nationwide regulatory system.Gujarat, and its adjoining Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu are the only places in India where cow slaughter can lead to life imprisonment. Photo: Tarushi AswaniEconomic erasureIn October 2025, Rahman Baloch, a cattle transporter also from Banaskantha, was stopped while ferrying calves from Rajasthan into Gujarat, a routine part of his work. Baloch said that he was not ferrying any slaughtered cows or calves but Hindu vigilantes alerted the police, who detained and allegedly severely beat him up. His truck was confiscated and since then, Baloch has had to totally stop operations to earn his livelihood.“I got a cattle transport license simply so that I could exit the cattle trade business, because I was aware of the way gau rakshaks were harassing and milking money out of people,” Baloch told The Wire. “But on that day, they just wanted a Muslim man having some business associated with cattle. They caught me, got me humiliated by the police, and made sure I had to pay a fine of Rs 10,000 to free myself. Since then, I’ve earned nothing. How do I feed my family, let alone send children to school?” he said.Advocate Hozefa Ujjaini recognises this pattern of harassment, extortion, attack, prosecution and life imprisonment. “This has effectively turned livelihood into a trap, where survival itself becomes criminalised,” he told The Wire.A hundred kilometres away in Vijapur, Salim Mir lives in a tenement made of coarse cloth and wooden sticks. Mir belongs to a traditional nomadic community of herders and shepherds. “We didn’t choose to become herders, it’s what our family has always done. But whenever these Bajrang Dal or VHP members see us taking our cattle for grazing, they harass us, steal our goats and then we are left helpless,” Mir said.Another herder, Ramzan Mir said “We had two cows and four goats, we would sell their milk and live off of that income. But we had to sell off the cows at distress rates, because these goons can’t see Muslims rearing cattle and no one listens to our complaints”.In Sabarkantha’s Motipura, Dinesh, a former cattle owner and transporter, has shifted to an altogether different profession. Dinesh now paints homes for a living. Belonging to the Devipujak community – a group identified within the De-notified Tribes (DNT) or Semi-Nomadic Tribes – he feels that the VHP and Bajrang Dal harass them with a casteist mindset and in order to extort. “I had at least 10 cows and buffaloes. Our family earned from animal husbandry. Bajrang Dal’s local goons would make it their routine to harass us whenever we would transport cattle. Now many like me have shifted to other livelihoods, and honestly, we are suffering financially. We would earn thousands in a day, now it is barely Rs 400-500 a day,” he said.Rajeshbhai Devipujak, another former cattle owner and transporter has also shifted to another form of livelihood. He now plasters homes for a living. “I had goats, buffalos and hens. They harassed me into quitting and selling all my animals. Their harassment and intimidation is pushing us cattle owners to poverty” he said.The Wire also spoke to several other families involved in animal husbandry across Gujarat, who shared that they were selling animals on distress rates, or shifting to casual labour because Muslims can no longer monetise cattle safely. India ranks in the world’s top five buffalo-meat exporters, with exports worth nearly $4 billion annually. Saleem Mir and Ramzan Mir, two nomadic herders discuss their routine in Gujarat’s Vijapur. Photo: Tarushi AswaniLegalising hateDespite this effect, leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad say that the cow slaughter law is not being properly enforced and that the Gujarat government’s action on the ground is not evident.Kishore Vatelia, provincial president of the North Gujarat Cow Protection chapter of the VHP, has openly criticised the Gujarat government. He said people had expected that a Hindu nationalist government would solve such issues, but claimed that there is a lack of cooperation at many levels.Prasad Chacko, a social worker based in Ahmedabad, feels that the nexus between the vigilantes and the police has always existed. He explained to The Wire that in the normal course, the nexus is basically for extortion, but when the vigilantes cause serious or fatal violence, the aim is to ascend the political ladder by getting noticed for their commitment to the cause.“It fans hatred for Muslims and hence fits in well with the ideology of the Hindutva fascist regime,” he said, adding how the life imprisonment provision can end up arousing communal passions that actually lead to violence.“This could invite charges under other laws also, which then may invite harsher punishments,” Chacko added. The Gujarat law can create the basis to extend the same draconian provisions to those states which do not have them, the social worker said. This story was supported by the Human Rights and Religious Freedom Journalism Grant Program.