Two people have been booked under the National Security Act (NSA) for alleged “illegal transportation of cattle” in Agar Malwa district in Madhya Pradesh, the police said on Thursday.

The development came two days after NSA was invoked against three people, including two brothers in Khandwa district — 271km south of Bhopal, accused of cow slaughter.

The suspects in the illegal transportation, Mehboob Khan and Rodumal Malviya, have been sent to a jail in Ujjain, the police said. The men, both in their 20s, have previous cases of illegal cattle transportation registered against them, said district superintendent of police Manoj Singh.

“When we checked their records and found they had been caught for similar crimes in the past too, and we decided to book them under NSA, which was vetted by the collector Ajay Gupta,” he said.

Of late, the illegal transportation of cattle has become a major issue in the district, and that has led to a law and order issue, Singh said. “Last year, there were 19 cases, but in January this year there were six cases of illegal transportation of cattle. In two of these cases, there was violence.” On Tuesday, the Madhya Pradesh government booked three people under the same law for alleged cow slaughter in Khandwa district, the first case in which the Kamal Nath-led Congress government invoked the act.

In Rajgarh, senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh raised questions over the imposition of the NSA on the three people in Khandwa.

“NSA should not be imposed for this. The accused should have been charged under other relevant laws,” Singh told reporters. Earlier this week, police said they arrested three people after getting information that some people were involved in cow slaughter near Moghat.

Police arrested Nadeem and Shakeel last week, and later they took the third person, Azam, into custody under various sections of Prohibitions of Cow Slaughter Act. The police said this was the first incident in Madhya Pradesh where NSA was being invoked against those accused of cow slaughter since December, when the Congress won the state elections.

First Published: Feb 08, 2019 09:23 IST