MP Police to nab export companies' owners in Mumbai

Barwani, MP, Aug 18 (UNI) The district police has sent out two teams for arresting the owners of two major Mumbai-based export companies allegedly involved in cow flesh smuggling even as the accused submitted anticipatory bail pleas in the Sessions Court here.

The petitions were submitted on August 14. Police said that the first team went to Mumbai while the second would touch Delhi and Uttar Pradesh to catch other accused. The companies collect flesh from various parts of India. Nine people, including Pune-based Central Food Laboratory Director R S Waghmare, were arrested.

Six containers containing 96 tonnes of flesh were seized in this district's Nagalwadi Police Station limits in February. A Gandhinagar-based laboratory confirmed it as cow flesh. In compliance of a court order, the flesh was destroyed after retaining samples.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court's Indore bench admitted the accused's plea for having the samples analysed at Pune. The samples were analysed as 'buffalo' flesh. To expose the lab, police sent a dead cow's sample and the lab again analysed it as buffalo flesh.

Waghmare was arrested on August 8.

UNI XC-AC 2003