Goregaon: Dozen puppies found hammered to death

The children who fed them found their bloodied carcasses: 12 puppies, some as young as a week old, were bludgeoned, dropped from a height and subjected to untold tortures before being killed and put back in the makeshift shed the children of Samrit Nagar had built for them.

The incident came to light on the morning of August 29, when the children of the area went to feed "their" puppies at 7 am, before heading to school. They had pestered their elders to help build a makeshift shelter for the puppies and used their pocket money to care for them. The horrified students told their parents and the elders called a local NGO that works for promoting and fighting for animal rights.

"The local kids and I have fed the mothers of these puppies when they were young, and taken care of them when they became mothers," says Ashley Packiam, a local feeder. "The kids were ecstatic about caring for the new puppies. But now, they are traumatised. Never have I seen them cry so much."

By 11:30 am on the same day, an FIR was lodged with Goregaon Police Station, after the animal rights body assessed the situation and took the legal path.

A case has been filed under IPC Section 429 which covers "mischief by killing or maiming... any animal of the value of fifty rupees...shall be punished with an imprisonment term of up to five years or with fine". Even as animal rights activists hammer away at the legal system to change this, the fine for animal cruelty remains at Rs 10 to Rs 50.

The dead bodies were taken for post-mortem to the Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals in Parel, and the report is awaited.

Meanwhile, a pall of gloom has descended over the area. The residents, who had built the shelter for the puppies to keep them dry in the rain, say it housed three different litters. One was only a week old, while the others were not even a month old. Their torturers seem to have killed them through various means, suggest their injuries. "The younger ones look like they were dropped from a height," said one resident, "There are no external injuries. The older ones must have tried to run away, and seemed to have been beaten to death by a blunt object."

The puppies and their pack occupied a plot vacated for redevelopment.

"They would chase away unsocial elements such as drug and alcohol addicts. That's probably why they were killed," says Deepali More, 49, a homemaker who used to feed the puppies. "The whole neighbourhood would feed them."

CCTV footage recovered from a nearby Jain Temple shows four individuals carrying the pups away, however, they don't show up on any other place in the locality surveilled by CCTV cameras, so it's hard to pinpoint the exact location of the crime and what exactly took place there. The police have questioned residents and shopkeepers, but no one recognized the suspects.

Twenty-year-old Tanmay More, who has been feeding animals in the area for four years, is visibly angry. "The reason we built the shelter is to avoid animal-human conflict. Anyway, the puppies were too young to be a nuisance, they hadn't even opened their eyes."

Vijay Mohanani, an animal rights activist, had taken it upon himself to see the case through. "The puppies didn't deserve to die like this and justice has to be served." He has offered a reward of Rs 25,000 to anyone who can help nab the culprits. "If we don't get any leads in a week," he adds, "we will raise the prize money to Rs 50,000."