Supreme Court warning to State Governments

New Delhi, Jul 03: The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on pleas seeking directions to formulate guidelines to curb cow vigilantism violence, saying no one can take the law into their hands.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud said this was a law and order issue and each state government had to be responsible.

The Supreme Court bench said it will pass an order on the pleas.

During the hearing, the Supreme Court bench observed that the instances of gau rakshak violence were actually mob violence, which is a crime.

Additional Solicitor General P.S. Narasimha said the Centre was alive to the situation and trying to deal with it. He said the main concern was maintaining law and order.

The Supreme Court bench said nobody can take law into their hands and the onus was on the state governments to prevent incidents of gau rakshak violence.

On September 6 last year, the Supreme Court had asked all the states to take stern measures to stop violence in the name of cow protection, including appointment of senior police officers as nodal officers in every district within a week and acting promptly to check gau rakshaks from behaving like they are "law unto themselves".

The Supreme Court had sought responses from the Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh governments on a plea seeking contempt action for not following its order to take stern steps to stop violence in the name of gau rakshak activities.

The contempt petition has been filed by Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, saying the three states had not complied with the Supreme Court order of September 6 last year.