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Catching stray animals in Jaipur: How many municipal men does it take to put a cow into a truck?

The JMC has stepped up its drive to catch stray animals since Argentine tourist Juan Pablo, 29, was gored to death by a stray bull in Jaipur’s walled city in November 2017 — a warning sign in a city frequented by foreign tourists. Last month, British tourist Mallisha was injured by a cow in Jaisalmer

Waiting for a truck, three desperate men hold onto one rope while Fakhru secures the other (Express Photo by Hamza Khan)

“Puchkaar do!” shouts Munna Khan, 55, to his team, asking them to caress a cow as they sneak around it with lassos, on an early, deserted morning in Jaipur’s Sanganer area. As the youth, all in their early 20s, circle around, the restless cow suddenly gets up and makes a run for it. The team lets fly with their lassos, and one lands successfully around the cow’s horns. The others rush in to catch the other end and tie it to a pole.

A Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) truck, which is part of the drive to round up stray cattle in the city, now draws up next to the cow. As the animal grunts, Anil, 21, strokes its head, and the team gently pushes it into the truck, deploying more ropes and a platform. The scene has drawn several onlookers by now, with vehicles slowing down and people peeking out of buildings. Krishna and Fakhru, who are also part of Khan’s team, do their best to shield prying eyes. The entire process, till the truck drives away with the cow, takes about 10 minutes. For Khan and his team, 10 stressful minutes.

The JMC has stepped up its drive to catch stray animals since Argentine tourist Juan Pablo, 29, was gored to death by a stray bull in Jaipur’s walled city in November 2017 — a warning sign in a city frequented by foreign tourists. Last month, British tourist Mallisha was injured by a cow in Jaisalmer.

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In July last year, Rajasthan Minister for Food and Civil Supply and Consumer Affairs Baboo Lal Verma had been injured and his personal assistant killed when their vehicle had hit a road divider while trying to avoid a bovine near Kota. Stray cattle have also been accused by farmers of damaging crops in the state.

Since January 2016, more than 31,000 animals have been caught in Jaipur: including 15,000-plus cows, over 7,800 calves, and over 7,600 bulls, apart from 70-odd buffaloes and two dozen donkeys. A third of them, 10,200-plus, have been caught in the past three months alone, following Pablo’s death.

Festive offer The cows, bulls are loaded separately to prevent fights. (Express Photo by Hamza Khan)

“Cows are gentler beings, usually,” says Khan, the most experienced among his team, who claims to have spent over 30 of his 55 years catching cattle for the JMC. A permanent JMC employee — unlike most of those in his team — he is paid Rs 30,000-35,000 per month. The temporary employees get paid Rs 200 per day and up to Rs 6,000 per month. Their day starts near Sanganeri Gate at about 7 am, led by the JMC’s ‘Awara Pashu Prabhari (In-charge, Stray Animals)’, Rakesh Gupta, 53.

Armed with a walkie-talkie which, he says, is “reserved for emergencies”, Gupta says the JMC owns four ‘catchers’ — the name given to trucks in which the strays are rounded up. These are equipped with mechanical platforms, CCTV cameras, collapsible metal doors and metal mesh roof. When needed, the JMC hires more ‘catchers’ from contractors. Once the ‘catchers’ are full, the animals are transferred to regular trucks or ‘shifters’, to take them to shelters. All the cattle, including the cows, calves and bulls, are taken to Hingonia gaushala, the Rajasthan government’s largest cow rehabilitation centre.

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The JMC teams work in two shifts — roughly 7 am to 1 pm, and 3 pm to 8 pm. After the November tourist death, the staff strength was increased, and so there are now officially 25 contractual staff, and six permanent staff members per shift. The only constant appears to be Gupta, who decides the route a team will follow on a certain day, often in response to a complaint about a stray.

At 9 am, the market on Sheopur Road is just waking up when the team that started work from Sanganer spots a bull. The men jump out at Gupta’s signal and, within seconds, surround the animal. Just then, a local comes rushing, and yells at Gupta and the others to stop. As he pushes and gently slaps the bull till it runs away, he explains that it is a pet, and the JMC men should get lost. Keeping his cool, a smiling Gupta asks why the bull was on the streets if it was domesticated. While the man is evasive, the JMC team drives away, knowing better than to argue.

After barely a couple of minutes, as it is passing through a residential area, the team spots another bull. As the animal quickly gets onto its feet on spotting the trucks, Fakhru, pulling on a beedi, quips, “The animals catch our peculiar stink.” The men manage to throw two lassos around the bull, but then realise there are no ‘catchers’ around. So three desperate men hold on tightly to one rope, even as Fakhru ties another to a tree. Snorting and tugging, the bull fights back.

The JMC vehicles have all along been parked outside the home of Rajesh Kumar, 45. But he says he is happy to see the vehicles. “The animals will be at peace in Hingonia. Here they fight and injure each other,” he says. With the ‘catcher’ soon full, the animals are nudged onto the ‘shifters’, with the ends of the two trucks brought together and chained. “We rarely load cows and bulls together because they fight,” explains Gupta.

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Moving ahead with one of the empty ‘catchers’, Vijay, 25, points to a herd sitting under a tree in an open ground in Pratap Nagar. He says it is futile even giving them a shot. Instead, they go for a solitary cow standing some distance away. But while they manage to lasso it, the cow darts away, with the rope still tied to its horns. Gupta chases it down the narrow streets in his SUV, proudly pointing to how he is tracking the barely decipherable mark left by the rope dragged along the dusty track. About a minute later, Gupta turns a corner, and there the cow is, now walking. A triumphant Gupta catches the lasso under his tyres, and the cow finally gives up the fight.

A small crowd gathers soon, and an old woman, refusing to give her name, claims it is her cow. Gupta and the others ignore her, as they lift the cow into the truck. Mid-air, the scared animal relieves itself on the men trying to push it in, and slips and lets out a loud bellow. A collective groan goes around, and an elderly passerby, who identifies himself as advocate K S Surana, yells at the driver. “Kya laaparwahi hai, chot lag jayegi (What sloppiness, the animal will get hurt),” he admonishes.

A young woman starts dialling a number. Realising the situation is getting out of hand, the men don’t wait to even wash their hands, covered in cowdung and urine, and drive away with the cow. “Mataphodi hoti agar aur der karte (There would have been trouble if we had delayed further),” Gupta tells Khan.

He talks of an incident from eight days earlier when a mob had attacked them. “The windows of our vehicles were damaged.” Gupta alleges that some of the men in the mob were close to a minister, and hence, like in other such instances, no action was taken. The animals pose almost as much danger. “Khoonam-khan ho gaya tha (I was covered in blood),” recalls Rajesh, 32, of the time he was thrown in the air by a bull about a month ago. “I had no option but to return to the job after a couple of days of rest.”

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Ravi says he once fractured his leg, while Fakhru shows marks below his neck from a bull’s horn. Vijay, 25, says he was rendered out of action for a month due to a bull attack. Gupta says he has seen Spanish bullfighting on television, but “those men are trained”.

Despite all the hurdles, on an average, the JMC catches about 75 animals every day. Gupta estimates there are 40,000 cattle more to go in the city alone — a figure confirmed by Dr Har Sahay Meena, the JMC Additional Commissioner.

Lal Singh, the Director of Gopalan Department — which is tasked with making cows economically relevant, among other objectives — puts the total number of stray bovines across the state at “1.5 lakh”. At the current rate of catching stray cattle, he adds, they hope to end the menace “within the next three years”.

Meanwhile, Gupta’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing. He can guess who it is. Pointing to the CCTV cameras on their trucks, he says their entire activity is monitored. “Once a bovine is loaded with us, no one can unload it… All sorts of people call (to let the animals go), and I tell them to retrieve them from Hingonia (shelter).” “There are thousands of bovines there,” he smiles. “It will be something trying to find one.”

First uploaded on: 18-03-2018 at 00:34 IST
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