In October 2018, while I was volunteering at All Creatures Great and Small, an animal shelter run by Anjali Gopalan on the outskirts of Del...
In October 2018, while I was volunteering at All Creatures Great and Small, an animal shelter run by Anjali Gopalan on the outskirts of Delhi, we were visited one afternoon by a young couple with a story straight out of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games. Their pet companion dog, a Pomeranian, had been killed by being thrown from the eighth floor of their building by a neighbour who got irritated when it ran across the hallway into his flat.
The couple was devastated and filed a police complaint. But under pressure from others in the building, and even the advice of the police, they conceded to a token punishment. The neighbour would have to feed 100 dogs in an animal shelter but otherwise face no penalties.
An extreme act of violence was not treated as a real crime, but just bad behaviour, undocumented and soon forgotten. All the heartbroken couple could do was find a shelter where the neighbour could pay to purge his guilt.
No data on animals
Stories like this appear in the media, or on social media all the time. Smartphone cameras, which have enabled citizen vigilance, ensure they come with horrifying or heart-rending images. A dog raped with a screwdriver in Goa.
A monkey hung and beaten to death in Telangana. A...
