Three people were arrested by the Assam Police in Jorhat district on Tuesday night for allegedly being in possession of cow meat. Those arrested include a minor, according to reports in the local media.

The accused were presented in a local court on Wednesday. The two adults have been sent to judicial custody while the minor has been sent to a juvenile home. Besides the minor, the other two people have been identified as one Shah Zaman Haque from Dhubri and one Aasur Rahman from Kokrajhar.

According to Jorhat district’s superintendent of police, Prasanta Kumar Bhuyan, the arrests were made after local people complained to the police against the labourers. “The three were working as manual labourers at a construction site,” said Bhuyan. “They had apparently told a few other people they had cow meat in their possession and that led to someone complaining to us.”

The police said they raided the camp they were living in and found around half a kilogram of uncooked meat. “They were arrested immediately and charged under the Cattle Protection Act of Assam, 1950,” said a police officer.

“We have submitted the recovered meat to the state animal husbandry department, who will send it to a forensic lab to ascertain if it is indeed cow meat,” Bhuyan told Scroll.in. He said the police were looking for the slaughterhouse from where they had soruced the meat. “They could not point out the place they had bought the meat from,” said Bhuyan.