BHUBANESWAR: On Saturday, the Government Railway Police (GRP) arrested a city hotel owner Ganesh Prasad Sahoo for instigating youths to unload 20 milch cows from a train and attack the railway staff and caretakers of cows on May 24.
Sahoo is the owner of Ashirvad Hotel at Cuttack Road and also heads the Old Station Bazaar durga puja committee.
Bhubaneswar GRP station inspector Saubhagya Kumar Swain said that Sahoo had a major hand in the May 24 incident. “After dissecting the CCTV footage and TV news clips, we spotted the man. We sent him to a local court here after arresting him on Saturday morning,” he added. The GRP has already detained two cow vigilantes on May 27 in relation to the incident. They were Sibananda Panda, 25, of Unit I area and SudarsanBiswal, 39, of Chintamaniswar under Laxmisagar police limits in the city. They were the members of Bajrang Dal.
Police sources said the three persons had spurred the youths to raid the parcel van of Kochuveli-Guwahati express train which was stationed at platform number two at around 8.50 pm on May 24 suspecting smuggling of cattle for slaughter houses. They had beaten the caretakers of the cows black and blue. Passengers were left high and dry for one and a half hours at the station following the incident.
Enquiries discovered, the Meghalaya government had bought the cows for distributing to the farmers. The cows were loaded at Salem station in Tamil Nadu. Before they reach Guwahati, the vigilantes had unloaded the animals here.
Later the railway officials sent the cows to Guwahati. After reaching there the cows were taken to Ampati, South West Garo district of Meghalaya.
-By OdishaAge
