Hyderabad High Court judge calls cow substitute to mother and God; wants slaughter to be made a non-bailable offence

In yet another addition to the list of '"cow and its importance", a Hyderabad High Court called the bovine creature a "sacred national wealth" on Friday, June 9.

Peacocks are celibate, says Justice Mahesh Chand Sharma who wants cow to be national animal [VIDEO]

Justice B Siva Sankara Rao of Hyderabad HC took to calling the cow a "substitute to Mother and God" while dismissing the plea of a cattle trader from whom 63 cows and two bulls were seized. Rao has dismissed the trader's plea as it is a settled legal position that Muslims do not have the fundamental right to insist on slaughter of healthy cows on the occasion of Bakrid.

The judge has also directed that veterinary doctors of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh who have been fraudulently certifying the healthy cattle as unfit for giving milk and thus sending them off to slaughter houses should be brought under the penal net of the Andhra Pradesh Cow Slaughter Act, 1977.

Andhra Pradesh and Telangana allow the slaughter of cows only when they are certified to be old and unproductive.

Rao also added that the Cow Slaughter Act should be amended and the offences under it should be made non-bailable and cognizable.

Cattle trader Ramavath Hanuma had filed a plea in the Hyderabad high court after a trial court in Nalgonda had rejected his petition for the custody of the 65 bovines which were seized from him. The cattle were seized from Kanchanapalli village in Andhra Pradesh. Though Hanuma had claimed that he had brought the cattle there for grazing, the prosecution alleged that he had brought the bovines from farmers for slaughtering them so that the cow meat could be distributed during the Bakri Eid festival.

Justice Rao has further said there was no need to interfere in the trial court's order. "Is a person entitled to claim interim custody of cows and bulls seized from him when he was allegedly taking them to a slaughter house? This question needs to be posed and answered in view of the national importance of cows which are substitutes to Mother and God," Justice Rao said in his order.

But Rao is not the only who has been proclaiming the divinity of the cow. Justice Mahesh Chand Sharma, the Rajasthan High Court judge who was in the news on May 31 had said that cow should be declared as the Indian national animal. He highlighted the significance of the cow in his 140-page verdict and said,

"There is no substitute for cow milk. We live on it. A cow is useful even after the death. We need its urine for medicinal purposes. Its bones are useful even for tantric purpose," explained the retired Justice Sharma. He further stated that he had made the suggestions from his soul.

But the list doesn't end here. Rajasthan Agriculture Minister Prabhu Lal Saini had claimed that cow milk has properties that can prevent cancer. "Cow milk is good for health. It is anti-cancer and has qualities similar to mother's milk," the minister said at the inauguration of a dairy plant in Sikar on June 5. A professor of physics at Mohanlal Sukhadia University in Udaipur had claimed that cow urine was capable of curing cancer, AIDS, and a bunch of other diseases.

While the credibility of these claims is indeed doubtful, what stood out was the claim made by Vasudev Devnani, BJP leader and Rajasthan's education minister. Devnani had said that cow the only animal on the planet that inhales and exhales oxygen.