Kerala House beef raid aftermath: Hello, Delhi Police, come get my neighbour, he is a culinary criminal!

I don’t hate my neighbour, I just don’t like him. He plays music too loudly and throws his rubbish into our side of the house. Besides, his window sill is covered with cigarette butts. Dissss-gusting. So I have come up with this idea inspired by what went on in Kerala House and the alacrity with which the cops responded to the accusation that the canteen was serving beef from cow’s meat. You have a burglary you find the police strolling up in their own sweet time. Somebody gets raped they hunt for a pen to take down the FIR. You get mugged they laugh and don’t come at all. But accuse someone of eating beef and the posse gallops in and saves the day. [caption id=“attachment_2486450” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Neelabh Banerjee’s toon for Firstpost on the beef row.[/caption] Imagine if I just called them on my neighbour. Hi, guess what, I smell beef cooking across the hall. Worth checking them out. Maybe the self-appointed guardians of my faith will fetch up and beat the guy to pulp. I can hear the sirens already. At least the loud music will stop. Trick is not making the accusation if its fish. Fish has a distinctive cooking smell. But everything else goes. Especially since the cops have had no training in meats per se and won’t know one from the other. If they can enter Kerala House they can easily enter my neighbour’s house, what fun. If my idea catches on and more folks start accusing more people of eating beef, the crime wave will rise exponentially because all the cops will be busy chasing down suspected culinary criminals. Okay, enough of the satire. Seriously, where are we taking this issue when privacy is thrown to the winds and strangers can enter a state government premise, trample down the door, raid the kitchen and smite us with righteous indignation? We have already had three deaths and counting… On nothing more than an airy accusation. And it is time Parliament passed a law and clarified what the national stance is on eating beef in a nation that has 300 million people living below the poverty line. You want to change things, promulgate a legally binding ordinance and then the nation will cow down. Enough of this guesswork about what can be done or not. Very soon you will have scenarios crossing the bizarre. A schoolteacher accused of eating beef by a failed student. A fellow passenger in a train creating havoc because he wants your seat. A passenger on a plane demanding an upgrade because someone is eating beef or so he thinks. Roadside gangs demanding ‘protection’ money or we are coming for you, Mr Beefeater. Blackmail. Revenge. For a lark. Like the Nazis painting ‘Jew’ on the walls of residence we can go with ‘Beefeater’ …or just a moo. How can we all live in fear of someone not liking what we eat? You are walking down the road munching a sandwich and you bump some guy or you have a fender bender and the fellow accuses you of eating beef and the next thing you know you are a victim of a mob frenzy. Even rapists get a better deal. They just barged in to Kerala House without so much as a by your leave and conducted a raid. It is a frightening thought. Isn’t that State territory which underscores the fact that the police broke the law? My neighbour better watch out. So might you. Even if you are a veggie, that soyabean looks very much like mashed beef. Because I say so.