Mumbai

INDIAN farmer Nitin Tarode wants to sell his old bull to help pay for his sister's wedding after his income was hit by patchy rainfall.

But he has struggled to find a buyer who will pay a decent price because of a ban on slaughtering cows, bulls and bullocks in Maharashtra, the western state run by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party. "Now I will have to take a loan for my sister's wedding," says Mr Tarode, the oldest of five siblings and the only earning member of his family in Akola, nearly 600 km inland from Mumbai.