How Neha Patel runs a Gujarat gau rakshak gang with impunity

On September 27, 2021, Raqul Qureshi, a 23-year-old butcher, was brutally thrashed by gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes) in Central Gujarat’s Panchmahal district. The incident was the first recorded assault by gau rakshaks in Gujarat since 2017 but it also marked an aggressive revival of such vigilantism in the name of the “holy cow”.

Over the past four years since the attack on Qureshi, BJP-ruled Gujarat has seen over 400 FIRs being registered against gau rakshaks on charges ranging from intimidation and assault to murder.

The cases, rising even more steadily since the BJP returned to power in the state with an unprecedented 156-seat victory in the 2022 Assembly polls, have been a disturbing and recurring reminder of how these self-styled vigilantes continue to break the law with impunity while the state moves sluggishly to implement the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in the landmark Tehseen Poonawalla judgment of 2018 to curb cow vigilantism and lynching.

Gau Rakshak Dal, led by a woman

Interestingly, the accused in a majority of such instances are all linked to one organisation, the Gujarat Gau Rakshak Dal (GGRD), which boastfully identifies itself as a conglomerate of cow vigilante groups, big and small, from across the state.

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The past couple of years have seen the GGRD’s ranks swell rapidly. It numbers now at just over 10,000 “volunteers” spread across 33 districts and drawn from diverse social and educational backgrounds, including engineers, real estate brokers, college students and even medical professionals but a common religious identity — Hindus.

Even more intriguing are the identity and credentials of the person at the helm of the GGRD: 44-year-old Neha Patel, who unapologetically flaunts her organisation’s brazenly illegal crackdowns as necessary public service and boasts of having been invited to Delhi last September to be personally felicitated by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi for her work as a “gau sevak”.

'Love for animals'

Patel had returned to her native town of Vadodara back in 2007 after having acquired an MBA from Australia’s Southern Cross University when she found her “calling” in animal rescue. After a stint in rescuing dogs for a local organisation called the Pranin Foundation and another one with the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), where she came in contact with gau rakshaks from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Patel turned, in 2009, to “saving cows and their progeny”.

Patel left the SPCA to join the Gau Sevak Dal, one of Gujarat’s biggest cow vigilante groups operating in the state then. In 2010, she also formally joined the VHP and became the head of the Gau Sevak Dal.

Then came 2019, when Patel, by now a familiar face within Gujarat’s saffron corridors, presented to the VHP Gujarat leadership her “idea of bringing all cow vigilante organisations under one banner”.

With the VHP firmly behind her and support pouring in from the wider saffron parivar, the GGRD took shape with the VHP “sanctioning” a group of 10 men to work with Patel in the bid to operationalise the cow vigilante conglomerate. Before long, as many as 50 gau rakshak groups agreed to come under the GGRD banner.

30 cases across 12 districts

Today, Patel has over 30 cases registered against her across 12 districts of Gujarat, a notorious distinction that she prefers to wear as a badge of honour. “We don’t fear FIRs as long as we are saving cows,” Patel, who has more than 30 cases against her in 12 districts, told The Federal.

For Neha Patel, the accusations of violent vigilantism aren’t a bother. She merely says the GGRD eschews “physical violence” but “our boys sometimes become sentimental.”

For Patel and her GGRD, the relative calm in Gujarat between early 2017 and September 2021, when the state recorded no cases of cow vigilantism, was but a blip that only aided in more aggressive recruitment of gau rakshaks following the attack on Raqul Qureshi.

Qureshi, a government-registered butcher, was ferrying goats for his shop when Patel and her brigands from the GGRD accosted him. “They stopped me and asked to open my pick-up truck. Even when they saw that I was carrying goats, they began to verbally abuse me saying I slaughter cows every day and I cannot fool them by showing goats for a day. Then one of them pulled me down and about six or seven of them began to hit me with rods. My home was nearby, so I somehow ran away,” recalls Qureshi.

Though he managed to save his life that day, the injuries Qureshi suffered during the attack took almost seven months to heal.

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Infamous case of flogging

Following the incident, Panchmahal police filed an FIR against 10 people, including Patel. This was, of course, no deterrent for the GGRD, which only intensified its vigilantism subsequently, as if trying to make up for the time they lost between 2017 and 2021 when the political and social backlash over the infamous Una Flogging Case had forced the ruling BJP to really crack down on gau rakshaks.

The Una Flogging Case of July 2016 had generated considerable political heat against the Gujarat government, then headed by Modi’s confidante Anandiben Patel, now the Governor of Uttar Pradesh. Seven Dalit men were publicly flogged by cow vigilantes in Una taluka of Gir Somnath district. The incident had sparked widespread protests by Dalit and civil society organisations demanding strict action against the perpetrators in particular and cow vigilantes in general.

Patel seemed to suggest that the resultant opprobrium and the fact that Gujarat was due for assembly polls the following year forced the BJP to withdraw the tacit patronage it gave to cow vigilantes.

Wrong targets

Defending the accused in the Una case not on grounds that they didn’t commit the violence but that they didn’t know the victims were Dalit, Patel almost lamented that even Modi condemned the public flogging while “no one came in support of our boys”.

“Our brothers did not even know that the men belonged to the Scheduled Caste. That incident impacted our morale. Even our tallest leader, Modiji, spoke in support of the Dalit men. No one came in support of our boys,” Patel told The Federal.

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Govind Parmar, counsel for the victims of the Una flogging incident, agreed that the case did force the BJP on the back foot at the time and halted the wanton violence by cow vigilantes for a few years.

“The then Anandiben Patel-led government came under tremendous pressure to take action against cow vigilantes. The incident had caught the attention of the media across the globe. Besides, state election was coming up in 2017. For the first time, we saw swift action against cow vigilantes,” said Parmar.

“Sixteen special courts were established to expedite the cases of caste atrocity. As the Una accused were being tried in one of the special courts, many complaints against the gau rakshaks began to be taken up in courts across the state. This helped in curbing the violence against Dalits and Muslims too,” Parmar recalls.

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Growing in numbers

That respite ended with the Raqul Qureshi case in September 2021 and, after the BJP rode to power for a record seventh consecutive term, and its highest ever seat tally of 156 in a 182-member Assembly the following year, the wrath of the cow vigilantes returned with a vengeance too.

“We have been recruiting (gau rakshaks) since 2022. Today, we have more than 10,000 members in GGRD who are engineers, real estate brokers, college students, and even doctors, spread across 33 districts. We are more organised than we used to be. We plan and operate together. All our members are just a WhatsApp message or phone call away. They immediately leave for the spot whenever we get information about cow smuggling,” said Patel.

Her social media accounts regularly feature posts of her “successful operations” across Gujarat.

If the attack on Qureshi was the first recorded instance of assault in the name of cow vigilantism in Gujarat since 2017, the first instance of lynching to be recorded in Gujarat following an eight-year “lull” came in May 2024 when gau rakshaks beat to death Misri Baloch Khan, a labourer, in Banaskantha district. Khan and his friend, Mohammed Hussain, were ferrying two buffaloes when they were attacked by vigilantes. The perpetrators in both instances were volunteers of the GGRD.

For Patel, though, the accusations of violent vigilantism aren’t a bother. She merely says the GGRD eschews “physical violence” but “our boys sometimes become sentimental.”