The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up the Assam government for pursuing a criminal case against a man for allegedly transporting beef and stayed the trial, saying the state “should have better things to do”.

“You, the state, should have better things to do than run after these people,” Justice Abhay S. Oka, who headed the bench, told the Assam government’s counsel.

The bench, which included Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, orally remarked that an accused cannot be expected to know the nature of meat they have not themselves packed.

Senior advocate Manish Goswami, representing the accused Abhijit Saikia, had said earlier that his client was only a warehouse owner.

Assam’s BJP government had last December banned the serving and consumption of beef in public places including hotels, restaurants and community gatherings.

It said this was being done to strengthen the Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 2021, which prohibits the sale and purchase of beef in areas inhabited by non-beef-eating communities and within 5km of any temple or satra (Vaishnavite monastery). The Act aims at regulating the “slaughter, consumption, illegal transportation”
of cattle.

Goswami said that Saikia’s company, Eden Cold Storage Private Limited, sells frozen food that it buys in processed and packaged form from various manufacturers and distributors across India.

“He (Saikia) is not the manufacturer... he has not packed it…. How will he know that it is beef?” the bench asked the state government’s counsel, senior advocate Chinmoy Pradip Sharma.

“How will he recognise it, (the) naked eye cannot differentiate it.”

The bench noted that Section 8 of the Assam Cattle Preservation Act says that a person involved in the sale or manufacture of beef must have “knowledge” about the product being beef for their act to constitute an offence. Without such knowledge, the person cannot be prosecuted.

“How will a layman recognise it as the meat of which animal?” the bench asked.

It posted the next hearing to April 16.

A refrigerated van heading for Saikia’s premises with processed and packaged buffalo meat, bought from a manufacturer in Bihar, was confiscated in Kokrajhar district of Assam, Goswami said.

The meat was sent for forensic analysis, which found that the processed meat contained cow antigen – a chemical present in both beef and buffalo meat, Goswami said. He denied the allegation that Saikia was trying to sell beef disguised as buffalo meat.

Saikia has challenged a Gauhati High Court order, passed last October, that refused to quash the criminal case against him.

On November 18, the apex court directed that “no further steps shall be taken against the petitioner” on the basis of the FIR. On Friday, it stayed the entire trial proceedings arising out of the FIR.