Indian border guards have come up with a novel way to stop cattle being smuggled from eastern India into neighbouring Bangladesh: they are issuing cows with photo-ID cards.

The guards began photographing thousands of cows in border areas of the state of West Bengal earlier this year after a series of gun battles with smugglers and Bangladeshi border patrols.

They have now started producing laminated identification cards, including each cow’s photograph, its owner’s name and address, and details such as the animal’s height, colour, sex and other distinguishing features.

Once the cards have been issued, the guards plan to conduct random raids on farms, where smugglers often conceal their cattle, and to confiscate animals without documents. “This is one measure that will help to combat criminality in the border area,” Somesh Goyal, the Inspector General of the Border Security Force in West Bengal, told The Times.

India shares a 2,500-mile (4,025km) border with Bangladesh, which is one of the world’s most densely populated countries – as well as one of its poorest – and suffers from chronic shortages of food, especially meat.

Its 150 million people, 88 per cent of whom are Muslim, eat beef, especially during festivals, but have to import most of it as there is only enough grazing space for 23 million cows. India has an estimated 250 million cows – many wandering city streets – but its 880 million Hindus consider them sacred, and slaughtering them is illegal in much of the country.

Exporting cattle from India is technically legal, but no one has ever applied for a licence because of the religious sensitivities involved. As a result, hundreds of thousands of cows are smuggled every year from India, where they cost about 5,000 rupees (£60) apiece, to Bangladesh, where they can sell for more than four times that.

In 2005 more than a million cattle were illegally taken across the border in West Bengal alone, according to Mr Goyal. Last year the number dropped to 450,000 after about 2,800 people were arrested in an antismuggling drive, he said. Now the local government wants to tighten border controls even further to stop smugglers from using the same route to take arms, drugs, fake currency, sex workers and Islamic militants into India.

“I am not worried about cattle smuggling in itself,” said Mr Goyal. “My concern is the network that is used.” He said that border guards had also seized sugar, vehicles and machine parts being smuggled into Bangladesh, and that weapons, fake currency and drugs were being taken into India. India is building a fence along its border with Bangladesh, but only 350 of its 750 miles have been completed in West Bengal and the rest is largely unmarked and unguarded. So porous is the frontier that border guards and police are often accused of working with the smugglers and corrupt local politicians.

Indian farmers say that police and border guards steal their cattle and smuggle them over the border themselves. The Bangladeshi Government has also accused Indian border guards of shooting dead dozens of Bangladeshi cow herders and traders and stealing their cattle.

Times Recommends

• Tehran cannot live up to its rhetoric
• The new unicycle that will ‘change the world’
• We cannot wish away Iran’s bomb