The public discussion around religion, law, and secularism in India often reveals a striking double standard. In our legal landscape, it is not uncommon for courts to reference religious texts when deciding cases. When judicial authorities cite Sharia law to settle disputes, these references are typically met with absolute silence by self-appointed defenders of secularism, or they are defended with complicated and confusing excuses.

However, a massive media storm erupted recently when a court in Gujarat referred to Hindu scriptures while handing down a life sentence to three Muslim men involved in an organized cow slaughter and beef-selling operation. Critics immediately rushed to frame this as an abandonment of legal procedure and a dangerous shift toward enforcing a religious code.

As an editor dedicated to presenting the unvarnished truth, it is crucial to dissect this narrative. The controversy primarily centers on an article published by the legal reporting portal Bar and Bench on October 30, 2026, authored by Ritwik Choudhary. The piece, titled "Holy cow, unholy sentence," launched a severe attack on the Additional Sessions Court at Kalol in the Gandhinagar district.

To understand the flaws in the portal’s argument, we must first look at the timeline of the actual events that led to the conviction.

The Crime, The Raid, and The Investigation

The incident in question was not a random or accidental violation of the law. It was a calculated, commercial enterprise. On August 22, 2024, law enforcement officers from the Kalol police station conducted a targeted raid on a house located in Dhankani Vas, within the village of Jamla. During this operation, the police apprehended multiple individuals and found a massive quantity of meat on the premises. Laboratory testing was quickly conducted, which officially confirmed that the seized material was indeed cow meat.

The police investigation revealed a highly organized supply chain. According to the official police chargesheet, a local man named Lalabhai Senma and his son, Vitthal Senma, made a habit of buying physically weak cows and buffaloes that could no longer produce milk from surrounding areas at very cheap prices. They would then coordinate with their associates, who would slaughter the animals and prepare the meat for illegal sale.

During the raid, the police arrested Lalabhai Senma, Wasim Qureshi, Mohammad Rafiq Qureshi, and Ashfaq Behlime directly at the crime scene. Two other individuals involved in the network, Ghulam Moin Qureshi and Vitthal Senma, were arrested shortly afterward. In addition to the meat, law enforcement seized the weapons used for the slaughter, transport vehicles, and other equipment. The total value of the seized assets amounted to Rs 3.61 lakh.

The authorities registered a comprehensive case against the men under Sections 325 and 54 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Gujarat Police Act, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, and the Gujarat Animal Preservation Act. The accused men were eventually released on bail at various points between September and December 2024 while the trial progressed.

The Court's Verdict and Judicial Reasoning

When the trial concluded, Judge Brijeshkumari Rameshwarsinh Rajput delivered a verdict based strictly on the available evidence. A vital detail that critics consistently ignore is that the judge acquitted two of the accused men, Ghulam Moin Qureshi and Vitthal Senma, due to insufficient evidence against them. This acquittal completely contradicts the media narrative that the court was driven by blind ideological bias or a desire to enforce a theological code. If the judge were acting as a religious extremist rather than a legal professional, all the accused would have likely been convicted.

The remaining three men—Wasim, Mohammad Rafiq, and Ashfaq—were found guilty based on solid evidence. The court sentenced them to life imprisonment. While explaining the cultural context of the law and the gravity of the offense, the court quoted a verse from the Anushasan Parv of the Mahabharata, noting that the cow is seen as a mother figure beneficial to society.

The judge elaborated on this cultural significance by stating: “According to Hindu religious scriptures, the cow is not merely an animal but is regarded as a pillar of dharma. According to the Vedas and religious texts, when drops of divine nectar fell upon the Earth from Brahma’s mouth during his penance, Kamadhenu emerged from these divine drops. She is regarded as the mother of all cattle on Earth.”

Furthermore, the court emphasized the deliberate and cruel nature of the crime. The judge stated: “Despite being aware of the consequences, the accused mercilessly slaughtered a cow regarded as a mother and attempted to sell approximately 277 kilograms of beef obtained from it. If those who cruelly slaughter cows are not punished as prescribed by law, Gau Mata will gradually become extinct from the Earth. Therefore, it is necessary to award the accused the maximum punishment permitted under the law.”

The Flawed Critique by Bar and Bench

The Bar and Bench article took severe issue with this ruling. The author, Ritwik Choudhary, complained that the men were convicted “based on the recovery of 277 kilograms of beef, seized during a raid on a village house in Jamla.”

The portal mocked the court's references, writing: “Drawing directly from the Rigveda, the Manusmriti and the Harivamsa Purana, the court noted that the cow houses 33 crore deities; that the sun and moon dwell within its eyes; that Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh inhabit its horns; and that the four legs of the bovine represent the four Vedas. Then came the judicial diagnosis: if those who slaughter cows are not handed life sentences, “Gau Mata will become extinct from the earth.”,”

The author subtly questioned the judge’s intellect and integrity, complaining that the court completely ignored the defense lawyers' pleas. The defense had argued that the men were young (one was only nineteen), that they were the primary financial providers for their poor families, and that they had no previous criminal records. Because the judge prioritized the severity of the commercial slaughter over these emotional pleas, the article claimed that the judge's judicial “discretion collapsed entirely”. The author alleged that the life sentence was handed out based on nothing more than “a collection of Sanskrit verses and an imaginary ecological apocalypse.”

To support the argument that cows are not in any real danger, the article presented a wildly inaccurate statistic, claiming that India has “over 300 million head of cattle”. The author then deflected from the crime by stating that the real threat to cows is not slaughter, but rather the “ingestion of municipal single-use plastic, starvation in decrepit, State-funded gaushalas and road accidents”.

Choudhary then attempted to paint the law as barbaric by comparing it to other crimes. He dramatically wrote: “In the Republic of India, you can destroy a woman’s dignity, extinguish human life through reckless violence, or drive a spouse to suicide and still expect to walk free before the decade is out. Slaughter a cow in Gujarat, however, and the State demands your entire mortal life,”

Finally, the article accused the court of destroying India's secular fabric, stating: “When a criminal court begins citing the Manusmriti to calibrate the deprivation of fundamental liberty under Article 21, the constitutional wall separating Church and State does not just crack; it dissolves. The Supreme Court established long ago in SR Bommai that secularism is the basic structure of the Constitution. A citizen cannot have their prison term dictated by a magistrate’s theological veneration of an animal, regardless of how deeply held those religious beliefs may be in private life,”

Deconstructing the Liberal Playbook

When we apply basic journalistic scrutiny to the Bar and Bench article, its arguments quickly fall apart.

First, let us correct the data. The claim of having “over 300 million head of cattle” is factually wrong. According to the official 2019 livestock census, India's total bovine population is 302.79 million. However, this number includes buffaloes, yaks, and Mithuns. The actual cattle population is only 192.49 million.

Second, the author constantly uses a framing technique designed to downplay the seriousness of the crime. Throughout the piece, he reduces an organized criminal slaughter operation to the mere “recovery of XYZ kg of beef ” and specifically points to the “recovery of 277 kg beef” to make it sound like a minor possession charge. By dedicating long paragraphs to criticizing Hindu texts and barely mentioning the 277 kilograms of meat worth Rs 55,000, the author intentionally hides the commercial nature of the crime.

Regarding the punishment, Section 8(2) of the Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 2017, clearly states that the punishment for cow slaughter “shall not be less than ten years but which may extend to imprisonment for life.”

The legislature passed this law to grant absolute protection to cows due to their massive economic utility and religious importance, while keeping conditional rules for buffaloes. The statutory maximum is not just a decoration meant to sit on a piece of paper; it exists to be used. When criminals know this strict law exists and still choose to run an organized meat trade, giving them the maximum penalty is a sound legal decision.

The range of a punishment does not automatically become unfair just because the court chose the upper limit. For context, in July 2026, a court in Ahmedabad handed down an eight-year sentence for a case involving just 12 kilograms of cow meat. A case involving 277 kilograms logically demands a much harsher penalty.

The author’s comparison of this law to crimes against women and traffic accidents is both illogical and highly misleading. Different crimes have different legal elements, circumstances, and legislative goals. The BNS does not have a single, universal punishment for all crimes against women; the penalties vary greatly depending on whether the crime is assault, voyeurism, or gang rape. The author claims a family can torture a bride to the point of suicide and only serve three years under Section 85 of the BNS. This intentionally confuses the lesser charge of cruelty with the much more severe charges of abetment to suicide and dowry death.

Similarly, highlighting that a driver who runs over a pedestrian only faces five years under BNS Section 106(1) deliberately ignores the legal difference between an accident (negligence) and a deliberate act of murder (Section 106(2)). Pointing out that beating a dog to death only attracts a Rs 50 fine under the outdated Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960 does not prove that the Gujarat cow slaughter law is wrong. If anything, it proves the 1960 law needs updating.

Laws do not place a price tag on human lives versus animal lives. They set penalties based on the level of deterrence the government wants to achieve. For instance, counterfeiting currency carries a maximum life sentence under BNS Section 178. Does that mean the law values printed paper more than human life? Of course not.

Furthermore, equating the Gujarat Animal Preservation Act with the PACT Act in America (which carries a seven-year ceiling) or laws in the UK (five-year ceiling) is a false equivalent. Those western laws are designed to stop cruelty to animals. The Gujarat law is a preservation act meant to completely ban the killing of a specific animal, regardless of whether the slaughter is painless.

The author also contradicts himself regarding the 2005 Supreme Court case, State of Gujarat v. Mirzapur Moti Kureshi Kassab Jamat. In this case, a seven-judge bench ruled that the total ban on cow slaughter was valid because of the animal's economic usefulness. Yet, the Bar and Bench author turns around and compares the cow slaughter ban to BNS Section 299, a law about outraging religious sentiments. He complains that “insulting God” only gets a person 36 months in prison. If the Supreme Court justified the ban based on economics, why is the author comparing it to a blasphemy law?

The Truth About Secularism in Indian Courts

The final argument—that citing Hindu texts destroys the separation of Church and State—is perhaps the most hypocritical. The Kalol court's mention of the Manusmriti was strictly to provide cultural context regarding why the animal is protected. It was not the legal reasoning used to justify the life sentence. If judges actually used ancient Hindu texts as their legal rulebook, the punishment for cow slaughter would be execution, not prison time.

Claiming that the judge's observation that the “cow would go extinct” or that the specific phrase “Gau Mata will become extinct” was a mythical zoological forecast that dictated the entire sentence is simply dishonest. Yes, failing animal shelters and stray cattle on roads are real problems that require government action, but it is immature to demand a criminal court judge fix municipal issues during a slaughter trial.

India does not follow the rigid American model of separating Church and State. Our understanding of secularism, as outlined in the SR Bommai case, allows for a principled engagement with all faiths. A judge referencing a cultural text does not create a theocracy. If it did, where was the media outrage in 2023 when the Madras High Court cited Sharia law to annul a Muslim marriage? Where was the panic about the collapse of the Constitution in 2025 when the Kerala High Court quoted the Quran in a case involving a blind beggar threatening polygamy? Did anyone accuse those judges of operating with theological zeal?

In the end, this incident highlights a predictable liberal playbook. When faced with a straightforward criminal case involving an organized slaughter ring, critics will introduce larger, unrelated municipal issues to distract from the root cause. They will twist statistics and misrepresent legal statutes to gaslight the public. However, the truth remains clear: applying the statutory maximum penalty for a severe, organized violation of the law is an act of justice, not an act of religious extremism.