Judges Turn to Internet to Decide Beef Cases

In a High Court, internet often comes to the rescue of people accused of carrying beef.

File image. Workers walk through a shed past empty meat hooks during a strike against a ban on the slaughter of bulls and bullocks at an abattoir in Mumbai. (Photo: Reuters)

When there’s no laboratory to tell one meat from another, how does a court convict someone for the illegal possession of beef?

Whenever cases under the Punjab Prohibition of Cow Slaughter Act (1955) come up, the judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court often depend on the Internet to clear up the matter, reports The Times of India.

While acquitting people convicted of possessing beef by the lower courts, the judges have even quoted Internet searches in their judgments.

<p>Formulating a conclusion on the bare visual examination of meat product to establish it to be beef and to form basis of conviction would be erroneous.<br></p>

<p>Justice Mahesh Grover, Punjab and Haryana High Court<br></p>

There have been convictions of people caught with the head or skin of a cow as this clearly identifies the animal, but there is nearly a 100 per cent acquittal in cases where people have been caught with just the meat believed to have been beef.

Read the full report here.