But far more dangerous than the cattle, according to the cowboys, are the people they encounter. The cow catchers have been involved in fistfights with drivers enraged that the cowboys have blocked traffic while trying to remove cows from a busy road. Religious Hindus, who sometimes feed the stray cattle found near temples, have on rare occasions been known to pelt cow catchers with stones.
"It's an occupational hazard," said the city's most senior cow catcher, Virpal Singh, who is no relation to Brajveer Singh.
An even greater concern, however, are the thousands of illegal dairies that operate in the city. The government classifies any cow wandering the streets as "stray," but many of these animals are actually owned by unlicensed dairies. The dairy operators - and the slum dwellers who buy their cheap milk - often react violently when cattle catchers arrive.
In return for enduring these risks, a cow catcher earns about 10,000 rupees, or $250, a month. That is less than what the city employee assigned to drive the cow catchers' truck makes, but most cow catchers said they were happy to have a government post, which provides job security and benefits.
Once the cow catchers capture their daily quota of nine to 10 animals, they drive the cattle to a city-run compound where workers use a long pipelike gun to shoot a microchip down the cow's esophagus. They then deliver the cattle to one of five government-approved cow sanctuaries on the outskirts of the city.
These shelters, called gosadans, are run by Hindu charities but receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional funding from the city. In theory, the microchips are supposed to keep the shelters honest, preventing them from selling the cows back to illegal dairies or turning them loose.
But the cow catchers say it is not uncommon to capture the same animal more than once. Virpal Singh said dairies sometimes use political connections to force the city to release seized cows. And Vijender Kumar Gupta, chairman of the standing committee of the Municipal Corp. of Delhi, the government body responsible for overseeing the roundup of stray cattle, said that the influence of this "milk mafia" is the largest factor standing in the way of Delhi's meeting the court order.
Over the past two years, the city government says that it has taken more than 20,000 cows off the street. But this still leaves an estimated 5,000 to 12,000 strays.
"I don't think Delhi will ever really be free of cows," Virpal Singh said.
