Visakhapatnam/Bhubaneswar: Seven tourists from Hyderabad and Delhi were roughed up and one of their woman companions was allegedly molested by a group of cattle smugglers in the Rayagada district of Odisha on Friday.
“They were herding nearly 500 cattle without giving them any food and water. When we asked why they were being so inhuman, they started beating us. They also molested three of our women companions”, one of the injured K.V. Kanna said.
“We dialled the police frantically for help, but did not see any help coming. The traffickers would have beaten us to death with same sticks and axes with which they were beating the animals. We touched their feet and begged them to spare us. Only then did they leave us. Somehow, we managed to escape from there," he added. The attackers also snatched the mobile phones of the tourists.
“As my mother-in-law stays in Rayagada, my wife had visited her a few days back. When my other friends and I went there for sightseeing, she joined us. We were supposed to visit Puri, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, but all our plans just got ruined,” he said.
The FIR copy accessed by this newspaper showed that the victims had lodged a complaint with Chandili police station, around 7 pm on the same day. When contacted, inspector U.N. Sethi of Chandili police station said investigation into the case had begun and the accused would soon be arrested.
“The incident happened under Bissam Cuttack police station limits. After a preliminary probe, we transferred the case to Bissam-Cuttack police. The accused will surely be arrested,” said Mr Sethi.
Cattle dealers from Andhra Pradesh, through their local contacts in Odisha, buy cattle from Rayagada, Gajapati, Kalahandi and Koraput area and herd them by road allegedly without serving them any food and water on the way. This has often led to many fights between the cattle protection activists and the traffickers.
