Skinned alive for leather

Budding animation artist Vikas Shinde, 21, boards the 8.15 am slow train from Cotton Green to Santa Cruz every day to go to work. On Thursday, he made a horrifying discovery - scores of carcasses lying in the marshes around the harbour tracks between Mahim and Bandra.

"I was shocked to see many predatory birds hovering over the carcasses," said Shinde. An animal lover, he called Fizzah Shah, vice-president of the In Defence of Animals (IDA), a non-governmental organisation working for the welfare of animals.

"They were decomposing carcasses of month-old male calves, which are useless to tabela owners as they don’t yield milk," explained Shah.

When male calves are born, tabela owners in Jogeshwari, Kandivili and Goregaon sell them cheap, at around Rs 300 apiece, to leather manufacturers in Dharavi, who buy the animals’ skin as raw material.

"They skin the calves alive, as that yields the softest and most expensive leather, and then they throw the bleeding carcasses into the marshes," said IDA activist Kiran Indulkar. 

When DNA visited the site, there were at least a dozen carcasses lying there in various stages of decay. Slum-dwellers living in the area said hundreds of carcasses are dumped every month, and the practice has gone on for over a year.

"They come here carrying sacks containing live calves at around 6 am," said Hakim, a slum dweller. "They dump the sacks and then leave. After some time, another group arrives and starts skinning the animals."
 
"The stench from the rotting carcasses is unbearable," another slum-dweller, Pinto, said.
On Wednesday, IDA lodged a complaint with the Shahunagar police station, under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1972. Shahunagar sub-inspector Pra-mod Vichare said policemen were stationed near the site.

"We will continue to monitor the place for the next few days," he said.