Meet Sudevi Mataji, the German tourist who became Gau Rakshak

Sudevi Mataji, who founded Radha Surabhi Goshala in 1996 in Gowardhan town of the district, told ETV Bharat that she came to India as a tourist and fell in love with the Indian culture.

Mathura: A young beautiful 20-year-old girl who came visiting India from Germany some forty years ago is a 60 plus old woman who is in love with cows.

Friederike Irina Bruning, as she was known earlier, has an Indian identity - Sudevi Mataji, and serves thousands of abandoned cows everyday. She has been doing it for the past four decades.

The animal rights activist, who was awarded India's fourth-highest civilian award - the Padma Shri - in 2019 by President Ram Nath Kovind, was the only child to her parents and did not go back even when they came here to take her back.

Sudevi Mataji, who founded Radha Surabhi Goshala in Gowardhan town of the district to look after the abandoned cows, told ETV Bharat that she came to India as a tourist and fell in love with the Indian culture.

"I was the only child to my parents and they wanted me to go back to Germany but I didn't feel like going back," she said with a broad smile on her face.

She said that her parents kept on supporting her in all her endeavours and used to send money to support her Goshala, wherein thousands of abandoned cows were kept.

Radha Surabhi Goshala has over 3,000 cows and there are 80 people, which include doctors and others, to look after the cows.

Mataji said lakhs of rupees are needed to support the Goshala everyday.