The Bhutanese Leading the way.
On 11 April 2023, a video of two bulls with just their heads and tails appeared online on Facebook.
According to the Tshogpa Lhab Tshering from Goenshari Gewog, the bulls were slain three to four meters below the road in Goenshari, Punakha.
Yanglay, one of the bulls that perished, belonged to a caretaker named Dorji Tshering. He expressed his sorrow over the loss of his cherished bull that he raised with care and affection.
“It would have been better if someone had just stolen something worthless from me, I treated the animal as if it were a young child. He was like a child to me, and now that he is gone, I could care less about the money,” said Dorji Tshering.
“Today I have two cows, and this was the only bull that I had; now it has been killed by others,” he continued.
It has been over 4 years since such kind of incident emerged in the gewog. The villagers were taken aback by this episode because it was the most terrible they had seen.
According to Tshogpa Lhab Tshering, “3 to 4 years ago, we had a similar type of incident, where we discovered a cow that was missing all except its head and tail. The difference in that case was that the murderer had the courage to conceal the head, however, in this case the murderer was bold enough to do it in an open space just below the road 3 to 4 meters deep.”
The police in Punakha claimed that there had been no new developments in the case, but it was later discovered that they had contacted the owners of any suspect meat shops as well as the various gewog administrations. The checkpoint has also been alerted by the police. The police began inspecting the vehicles in the dzongkhag as soon as they received the complaints.
The Punakha Police informed The Bhutanese that a similar incident had happened this year when they discovered a slaughtered yak with a similar method of killing at the beginning of April 2023. The police have not discovered any new information though.
Tshering Dorji, said, “If there is no development in the case, I do not have any choice but to accept the faith because no one was there to witness or see the horrific incident.”
“I think I will be at a loss if if I did tell on someone out of suspicion and find out that I was wrong.So, despite the defeat, I chose to remain silent,” he added.
Yanglay the bull at least had an owner to grieve its passing; in contrast, the other bull had no owner and was a stray since the owner’s wife left the village after her husband’s passing.
The investigation, according to the Punakha Police, is ongoing.
