The Bombay High Court on Tuesday restrained the BMC from granting any permissions to slaughter animals inside residential flats this Bakr-Eid. (Express photo: Amit Chakravarty)The initiative of the Mumbai Police to use bar coded slips to stop cattle theft from Deonar abattoir before Bakr-Eid has led to the arrest of two persons on Tuesday on charges of stealing a goat. This is the only goat theft case that has been registered so far this year, said police.
Over 1.24 lakh goats and 2,700 buffaloes have been kept at Deonar abattoir to be sold for Bakr-Eid.Usually before Eid, the Deonar police registers nearly eight to 10 FIRs on goat theft. In several cases, the accused is not identified.
This year, however, the police believe that bar coding system has deterred people from stealing.
Additional Commissioner of Police (East Region) Lakhmi Gautam said that every year, several cases of goats being stolen from Deonar abattoir are reported. Hence this year, the bar coding system was introduced.
He added that when a person comes to the market with 50 goats, he is given 50 slips with bar codes for each animal. “When 10 goats are sold, the bar codes are also handed over to the purchaser. This ensures that no one can leave with a goat without a slip,” Gautam said.
On Tuesday, the police received a complaint from two people, alleging that two of their goats had been stolen.
Sometime later, two other people, while leaving the abattoir with two goats, provided slips with bar codes that did not tally with the ones on the system. “When asked, the duo could not answer. We suspect they must have randomly procured two slips,” an officer said.
Soon after, the two people who had filed the complaint were called by the police. They claimed that the two goats belonged to them.
Senior Inspector Ragini Bhagwat of Deonar police said, “We have arrested the two accused. Investigations are on.”
