Punjab Gau Raksha Dal chief Satish Kumar and his accomplices were remanded to a day's police custody by a Patiala court on Sunday. The police said Satish and his aides were responsible for wrongful restraint, extortion, looting, assaulting and sodomising cattle traders.
His two accomplices, Arun Kumar alias Anu and Kapil Kumar alias Gauri, both residents of Rajpura, were also arrested along with Satish in Vrindavan on Saturday.
Satish was booked under Sections 323, 324, 341, 342, 382, 384, 148, 149 and 506 of the IPC at the Rajpura police station on Aug. 8 after videos of him assaulting cattle traders were found on social media.
Satish had been on the run after Section 377 (sodomy) of the Indian Penal Code was added in the first information report (FIR) against him 10 days ago. The charges were added after two victims, Imran and Naseem, both residents of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, complained against the cow vigilantes.
The police said that they are attempting to probe Satish's property in Ambala and other districts of Haryana as they suspect it was financed through money extorted from cattle traders.
Satish pointed to a state sponsored conspiracy against him as he claimed that the Punjab government was targeting him to please Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"It all started after Modi's statement against cow protectors. The PM wants to please voters in Uttar Pradesh by encouraging cow killers," Satish was quoted saying by the Hindustan Times.
