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IN THEIR OWN RIGHT – Calling for Parity in Law for Animal Victims of Crimes A CITIZENS’ REPORT DEMANDING RIGHTS FOR ANIMALS IN INDIA in collaboration with Foreword by Justice (Retd.) K.S.P. Radhakrishnan Table of Contents I. Summary 1 Key Recommendations 6 Methodology 8 Key Findings of the Report 11 II. Unjust Laws: Violence Not Cruelty 14 A. Do animals have a right to be protected against violence? 15 B. Colonial Legacy: Unnecessary Suffering and Pain 16 C. Post-Independent Disposition of Animal Cruelty 19 D. Indian Constitution: Compassion and Dignity for Animals 24 E. Practical Difficulties in Law Enforcement 26 F. Limitations of Section 428/429 IPC to prosecute crimes against animals 30 III. COMPANION ANIMAL ABUSE 31 A. Companion Animals 32 B. Legal Framework 36 C. The Breeding Industry 38 IV. Pet Trade 44 A. Pet Shops and Markets 44 B. Online sale of pets 46 C. Illegal Wildlife Trade 47 V. Animals at Home 48 A. Neglect and Confinement 48 B. Abandonment 51 VI. Working Captive Animals 56 A. Animal Labour as Coerced Work 59 B. Legal Framework 59 C. Use as Traditional Labour 61 D. Superstition 76 E. Begging Animals 77 VII. Street Animals 82 A. Cruelty and Kindness 84 B. Debates over Animal Birth Control 87 C. ABC Rules versus Municipal Laws 88 VIII. Culture of Violence 96 A. Animal Sexual Assault 97 B. The Vermin Exception 105 C. Findings on everyday cases of assault on animals 106 D. Honouring the Animal Victims of Assault 109 IX. Conclusion & Recommendations 111 Acknowledgments 115 Foreword by Justice (Retd) K.S.P Radhakrishnan I have gone through the report documenting and analysing the crimes committed against animals during the period of 2010-2020 against the three main categories: companion, working and street animals. All the three chapters of this report are meticulously structured after an in-depth study and analysis of untold cruelty meted out to this species, blowing in the wind all natural human instincts. The caption of the report “In their own right” is a clear message to the humanity that animals have equal, if not superior, rights over human species. Humans are violating even the constitutional rights guaranteed to the animals under Article 21, 51 (g), Article 48, Article 48 (A), etc. with impunity. Humans and animals are members of the same ecosystem and share space, time and resources like water, air, light, etc. None is superior to other. Face to face, animals are stronger than humans, though humans are superior in terms of intellect, but with their evil and iniquitous behaviour, humans subjugate animals to all sorts of miseries for their pleasure and convenience. This attitude of humans cannot be tolerated in a civilized society. I am sure this report will be an eye-opener, if humans have eyes and ears, and bring out proper legislative measures to which animals are entitled as a matter of right and not as charity. Justice (Retd.) K.S.P. RADHAKRISHNAN Summary Sacred Games, the famous Vikram Chandra crime fiction, begins with a companion dog named Fluffy being flung out of a fifth-floor apartment. Such a heinous crime seemed unlikely in real life to me, until I met the parents of a Pomeranian who was dealt with a similar fate in Faridabad, Haryana. In October 2018, while 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 looking for a worthy shelter to honour the punishment the police had awarded their neighbour for throwing their pet companion dog, a Pomeranian, from the 8th floor of a building. The dog would often run across the hallway into the neighbour's apartment, which irritated him so much that he just threw her from the balcony. The punishment for murder, as agreed between the police and the family, was that the neighbour would feed 100 dogs in an animal shelter. The journey of documenting cases of crimes against animals that led to this report began from the sheer horror of what this dog and her family went through. An extreme act of violence was not treated as a real crime, but bad behaviour- undocumented and forgotten. In the past few years, the news media, largely led by the efforts of animal activists and the changing collective moral compass of our society, have increasingly been reporting cases of violent crimes against animals. Fortunately, many of these reports were made possible because of video recordings in this age of citizen social media vigilance. And yet the idea persists that crimes against animals are not a major issue in India. A range of responses are used to diminish or distance from the realities of the crimes being recorded. We are told that India is a country of compassion and that our large vegetarian population absolves us from the crimes committed by carnivores. The instances reported are dismissed as isolated cases, committed by perverted people and not representative of society in general. And the fact is that the absence of any continuous public record of crimes against animals, which allows these cases in mainstream or social media to appear to be only occasional instances of brutality, but in reality, they are very common and establish the everyday experience of animals in India. Many media reports have poorly attempted to collate cases of crimes against animals with misleading headlines, like “6 instances of animal cruelty”1 or “15 instances of animal cruelty”.2 Violence against animals, mischaracterised as an exceptional occurrence of 'cruelty', is in fact much more widespread. 1 Six instances of animal cruelty that show we humans are the real animals on the Earth; June 5, 2020; https://www.scoopwhoop.com/news/instances-of-animal-cruelty-india/ 2 15 instances of animal cruelty in India that make us wonder if we’re even human anymore; July 30, 2018; https://www.scoopwhoop.com/animal-cruelty-in-india/ 1 The record of crimes in India is published annually by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). Their annual report provides state and district wise data on violent crimes, assault, theft, sexual abuse of women and children and murders across the country. There is no mention of animal victims. Crimes of 'cruelty' under the PCA are clubbed in a miscellaneous category of Special and Local Laws (SLL) with no separate data. A visit to the Delhi office of NCRB confirmed that in their detailed collation of district and state-wise crimes across India, animals are not a class of victims for which any data is sought. Indian news reports may be flooded with cases of animals getting raped, beaten, assaulted, tortured and killed, but their exclusion from the national crime record, is a tacit denial of this reality. In May 2016, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC held the charge of 'animal welfare' until 2019) through a press statement released the first ever statistics of 24,000 animal cruelty cases over the period 2012-2015.3 However, no further information was provided, such as: Where were these cases filed? What was the nature of crime involved? Were there any arrests or prosecutions? Following this, in 2017, the Bombay Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BSPCA) released internal data of the past five years confirming 19,028 cases of recorded animal cruelty against victims ranging from dogs, cats, birds, goats, horses, bullocks, fowl and cattle. BSPCA's press release also revealed that not a single arrest had been made in any of these instances.4 For this report, we approached both the MoEF (Ministry of Environment and Forest) but no details were provided to us. We filed RTI applications across India in over 20 states, divided across state administration, police departments and the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI). The overwhelming collective response received was that no data for crimes against animals is recorded, hence none was available. It became clear there is no public record in India of crimes against animals. Some reports are available from national level animal organisations like the Animal Welfare Board of India , Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO), People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), People For Animals (PFA), Beauty Without Cruelty (BWC) on animals in slaughterhouses,5 circuses,6 cosmetic industry7 and the dairy industry.8 Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (WRRC) in Bangalore has done over 50 reports documenting abuses against captive elephants across India.9 3 Over 24,000 animal cruelty cases reported in last 3 yrs: Govt; May 3, 2016; https://www.indiatoday.in/pti-feed/story/over- 24000-animal-cruelty-cases-reported-in-last-3-yrs-govt-601049-2016-05-03 4 19,028 animal cruelty cases in Mumbai over 5 years; not a single arrest; June 3, 2017; https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/19-028-animal-cruelty-cases-in-mumbai-over-5-years-not-a-single- arrest/story-71BzHW03ONSXiKhu8FN0HL.html 5 “Stop Slaughter Cruelty” Campaign Investigations and Reports for the cities of Ahmedabad, Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Dehradun, Delhi, Hyderabad and Indore conducted by FIAPO in the past ten years. 6 “Animals in Indian Circuses: A PETA Report” 2013; “End Circus Suffering” FIAPO Report, 2017; “A study on the use of Elephants in Circus” by AWBI 2017 7 Multiple reports and studies published by Beauty without Cruelty on their website bwc-india.org. 8 “End Exploitative Dairies” FIAPO Report, 2018 9 Over 50 reports on captive elephants jointly conducted by the WRRC with the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation (ANCF) are available for download at https://cupabangalore.org/captive-elephant-welfare/; “Elephants. Not Commodities: Taken for a Ride 2: World Animal Protection” 2 Why this report? This report is different as it records the everyday violence faced by animals.
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