As Eid-ul-Adha draws closer, HC declines to lift ban on camel slaughter

Chennai, Sep 10: Camel slaughterbanned in Tamil Nadu by the Madras high court order dated August 18 cannot be lifted, said the court on Friday rejecting a new public interest litigation that sought a direction to authorities to create slaughter facilities in the state.

The court rejected the PIL a few days before the Muslim festival of Bakrid, during which camels are slaughtered in some places.

The court also directed the state government to ensure that its orders were not violated.

More significantly, the court made it clear that the jurisdictional police officers would be held responsible if camels were brought to their areas and slaughtered.

Reiterating its prohibition order and pointing out that it was passed last month after hearing all stakeholders, the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan said it could not entertain petitions that sought to circumvent its earlier orders.

Earlier, counsel for Animal Welfare Board of India Jayesh Dolia referred to an article published in The Times of India on Friday about arrival of camels in north Chennai ahead of Bakrid, despite the court's ban.

When the already listed matter was taken up, the judges said they had banned camel slaughter not only due to the absence of slaughter facilities in the state, but also due to other factors such as transportation of the animals from far off places, including Rajasthan where shifting camels out of the state has been banned.

The bench said camel is not native animal of Tamil Nadu, and added, "You cannot insist on sacrificing camel. Nobody prohibits sacrifice, but this animal is not in Tamil Nadu and it is not native to the state."

It also rejected the argument that camel slaughter came under essential religious practices.

On August 18, the first bench had said: "In view of the stand of the central government and the provisions of the central Act, including Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, at present we cannot have a situation where such camel slaughtering is permitted, especially in the absence of any facility for it."