More on the pigeon killings

An NGO, People for Animals, has decided to go to court for action against jail superintendent Rajesh Kesharwani and the jailer RC Singh of the Ghaziabad district prison for the macabre killing of more than 100 white pigeons. They will be charged under Section 428 and 429 of the IPC (Indian Panel Code) and if proven guilty, they can get up to 5 years of imprisonment for cruelly treating and killing the birds.

This Kesharwani is in trouble for the death of a jail inmate, and he wanted to put the blame on another inmate, Chandraveer, who used to feed these birds daily, and was deeply attached to them. To force a confession out of him, Kesharwani wrecked the necks of the white pigeons in front of Chandraveer in order to psychologically torture him.

People for Animals is directly filing the case in the court because it couldn’t elicit a positive response from the jail authorities and the district magistrate.

Kudos to such NGOs! And shame on the society that tolerates such officials or turns a blind eye to their heinous antics. Our fatalistic indifference bestows on them a sense of impunity. I’m not saying punishing them would instil a sense of guilt in them — they are beyond that — it just might discourage such future devilries at least amongst the public servants.

Another thing is, such acts, however trite they might seem to people who don’t care much for animals, lead to incidents such as the one in which a Bombay cop raped a 16-yeard-old girl in broad daylight thinking that he couldn’t be punished because he was in Bombay police. A cop who kills 100 pigeons in cold blood can easily commit crimes against the citizens too.