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Maharashtra's beef battle reaches Supreme Court

The plea suggested that according to the May 6 verdict, the state's obligation to prove "conscious possession" of beef would "constitute an insurmountable circumstance readily available to the wrongdoer to escape sentence".

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Maharashtra has knocked on the Supreme Court's door, challenging the Bombay High Court (HC) order which decriminalised possession of beef if the animals were slaughtered outside the state. The bench comprising Justices RK Agrawal and AM Sapre will hear the plea.

In May 2016, HC had struck down sections 5(d) and 9(b) of the Maharashtra Animals Preservation (Amendment) Act, 1995, which criminalised and imposed punishment on persons found in possession of beef of animals slaughtered in or outside the state. It decriminalised the possession of meat if the animals were slaughtered outside the state.

Advocate Nishant Katneshwarkar, who filed the plea, has assailed the judgment saying that "while coming to the finding that right to privacy forms part of the fundamental right to personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution," the High Court "ought to have appreciated that right to privacy has not yet been designated as a fundamental right".

The plea suggested that according to the May 6 verdict, the state's obligation to prove "conscious possession" of beef would "constitute an insurmountable circumstance readily available to the wrongdoer to escape sentence".

The High Court had "failed to appreciate that the restriction imposed by the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 1995 on the possession of flesh of cow, bull or bullock could not be interpreted and concluded, in any stretch of the imagination, as an infringement of right to privacy," the plea added.

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