Animal rights: India

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.

Fine for animal cruelty

The Times of India, Mar 18, 2016

Paltry fine of Rs 50 allows abusers to get away with animal cruelty

Those who attacked and fractured a leg of Shaktiman, a police horse during a protest in Dehradun may have to pay a fine of only Rs 50 for the cruelty caused to the animal under the prevention of cruelty to animals act of 1960. If he or anyone else repeats such cruelty then the punishment is only a fine of up to Rs 100 or imprisonment for three months or both. Animal rights activists said Shaktiman has brought to the fore how abuse of animals is taken with little seriousness. They highlight how neither Congress nor BJP amended the archaic law to upgrade the penalties.

"Under the PC act such abuse is a non-cognizable bailable offence. The punishment in cases of animal abuse have to be compoundable. Just recently two truckloads of camel meat was seized in Mewat and the fine they had to pay was only Rs 100," said Gauri Maulekhi of People for Animals (PFA).

There are hardly any convictions of cases related to cruelty to animals. "I have filed several RTIs to get data on convictions but there is no record. I can say that less than 2% are convicted in Delhi and far lesser in other states," she added. Maulekhi also said even violations like use of oxytocin in dairy or cruelty caused during performances by animals all fall under the Rs 50 fine bracket.

In contrast, the draft animal welfare bill 2011, has far more stringent clauses. For cruelty to animals, it prescribes a fine of up to Rs 25,000 or imprisonment up to two years or both and for repeat offences a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh and imprisonment up to three years. The bill has not been enacted. It was resisted by researchers for the stringent clauses it spelt out for care of laboratory animals. NG Jayasimha, lawyer and member of Animal Welfare Board of India said the attacker in Shaktiman's case may be given a stricter punishment because there are charges of disrupting police duty against him.