Anti-animal cruelty stance: Will India take the Costa Rica route?
Cruelty against animals is a recurring theme in many countries, notoriously India. There are countries that keep tightening the screws on violators and others that have sidelined proposing a stringent cure for the menace for way too long.
It was thus a watershed moment for victims and survivors among attacked animals and birds when Costa Rica passed a new animal cruelty law early this week. It stipulates hefty fines and increased jail time for violators. “We have got to demand that there be no more impunity; that whoever abuses an animal be punished,” Costa Rica President Luis Guillermo Solis decreed.
The parade marshal for the red-letter day, fittingly, was Duke, a dog that became well known in local circles after a brute hacked him with a machete. In another grim case, local teenagers seriously injured a toucan, pummeling its bill with stones.
India has also witnessed its share of horrific animal cruelty misdeeds. A police horse, named Shaktiman, got his hind limb amputated after hit allegedly by a politician during a rally in Dehradun last April. After several surgeries and a prosthetic limb replacement, Shaktiman succumbed to injuries.
Soon after, people and activists were aghast to watch a video of a group of teenagers in Hyderabad burning three puppies alive. The clamour for tough animal cruelty laws hit its peak after two medical students were caught for tossing a dog off from the roof of a tall building.
Despite these inhumane acts, the maximum fine for those who commit such acts of animal abuse in India – under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, enacted in 1960 and has since never been amended – is just Rs 50.
It’s time India woke up to the ‘harsh’ reality and pay heed to its animal activists, pet lovers and the common man to make the penalties tougher and introduce a jail term in case of extreme cruelty. For, a sick mind against animals is no less evil than a sick mind against humans.
There is a lesson or two from Costa Rica for us to learn.
