The much-hyped hunt for the stolen buffalos of State Urban Development Minister Md Azam Khan ended on Sunday morning after the police recovered all the seven buffaloes giving respite to the police higher-ups in the State capital.
But the thieves are still at large. A massive hunt was launched on Saturday after a caretaker Moshid Rafiq lodged a complaint that seven buffaloes were stolen from the farmhouse in Pasiyapura village under Thanaganj police station on the outskirts of Rampur city. When the police came to know that buffaloes belonged to Azam Khan, it launched Operation Buffalo Hunt. Around 100 policemen, drawn from five police stations, were put on the trail of the missing buffaloes.
Meanwhile, in a late night development, sub-inspector Sunil Kumar, and two constables, Ajay and Vipin, all from Rampur Kotwali, were sent to Reserve Police lines. The police said three cops were given punishment for failing to check the crime. Superintendent of Police, Rampur, Sadhna Goswami, who herself led the hunt, said on Sunday that all the seven buffaloes have been traced. Earlier reports suggested that only 5 of the seven buffalos were traced till Sunday evening.
“The buffalos are back in the shed,” she told reporters in Rampur giving a pat to the police team that had carried out this job “The Police had also deployed sniffer dogs to trace the buffalos. The Police went to nearby slaughter houses, searched adjoining forest areas and even went around the village enquiring about buffaloes,” she said.
Insiders in the police have questioned the claims of SP, Rampur. They pointed out that two buffaloes returned to the farmhouse on their own while the remaining five were found abandoned in a nearby village on Sunday.
Interestingly, none was arrested in the theft so far and the investigations are on. The incident has, however, was source of joke in social media. Daya Shankar Sagar twitted to say: “How come these buffalos stayed so long with Azam Khan.” He was referring to the incident when personal staff en bloc gave a letter to Department of Personnel saying they would not be able to work with Azam Khan.
Another twipple Biswaranjan Banerjee said that Khan had recently gone to Spain. He must have seen the bullfight there and may have tried to emulate Bhainsa fight in UP. Scared, these animals ran away. The best came from a police officer who said: “These buffalos must have gone to Meerut to attend Modi’s rally.”
Meanwhile, the incident also received strong reactions from the Opposition parties as they criticised Samajwadi Party for engaging huge manpower in the search of the buffalos. BJP spokesperson Vijay Bahadur Pathak said that such act of police shows how the Ministers were misusing the power in the present Government.
The UP Congress spokesperson Amarnath Agarwal said that this Akhilesh Yadav Government seemed only concerned to the care for the animals of the ministers while the general people were ignored as far as their security is concerned.