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Dear General Kharb,
On 13 Jan 2014, we received information that the men had again entered Delhi Cantt’s Sanjay Vihar Colony, Dhaula Kuan, and were catching dogs in the most inhuman way, using tripwires, etc. I advised the caller to phone the police which thankfully they did. I informed Mrs Maneka Gandhi’s office and also Mrs Mandy Seth of Friendicoes who immediately sent Friendicoes’ staff to Dhaula Kuan. By the time they arrived the police were already there – some constables and the SHO from the Delhi Cantt Police Station – as well as a senior army officer’s wife, herself a great animal lover.
On being asked who had allowed them into a restricted area like Delhi Cantt, the men said they had been escorted past security by a man on a motorcycle but they couldn’t or wouldn’t identify him. On further questioning it was learned that the catchers were from Jaroda village which lies within the Delhi Cantonment area. They are employed as contractual labour by the Subroto Park Air Force Station, at Rs 175 a day. According to these men’s supervisor (name unknown) who arrived shortly after, a group captain regularly hires them, almost daily in fact, to catch as many dogs as possible – sterilized, vaccinated, old, sick, pregnant, nursing mothers, pups – and provides them with all the equipment such as nets, wires, poles, chains. The Air Force has even constructed boxes and cages which are fixed on cycle rickshaws (see attached pictures) into which the dogs are loaded and transported to Subroto Park air Force Station, from where they are taken under cover of darkness in Air Force vehicles to Manesar and released on the highway, to die there of starvation, hypothermia or under the wheels of highway traffic! Again according to the supervisor, this officer is acting on the orders of an air marshal.
Attached is a video recording of the interrogation of the catchers by Friendicoes staff and the police.
During this investigation children who witnessed the horror told Friendicoes staff and the police that,
Meanwhile another Air Force officer, a squadron leader from Subroto Park Air Force Station, too had arrived with his staff. Together he and the police dissuaded the eyewitnesses from registering a police complaint or an FIR on the grounds that it was a Defence matter and any such action would impact adversely on the armed forces, and that it should be settled within the Cantonment. Mr Jairam Ramesh was right when he recently remarked, in a different context, that the military has become a state within a state!
The police allowed Friendicoes to confiscate the wires, chains, nets, etc., but would not let them dismantle the cages on the grounds that they were private property and these men’s means of livelihood! Means of livelihood? To continue killing, maiming, displacing dogs protected by the law? The police also refused to arrest the men without an FIR being registered and yet would not register one.
The men have given names and ranks of officers involved but I am withholding them for now. Mrs Maneka Gandhi, however, is in possession of all the information that we have pertaining to this case.
I have also learn’t of a similar incident that occurred in Subroto Park which is adjacent to Delhi Cantt. Some months ago caregivers reported that their community dogs had been taken away and dumped in Manesar. However, none of these animal lovers, many of them senior Air Force officers, would say anything further. We are sure they know who ordered the removal, but they refuse to discuss the case.
You may also recall the incident at Palam Airport in December 2012, when the community dogs of the area were similarly removed and disposed of. In that case Mrs Maneka Gandhi’s intervention and a strongly worded letter from AWBI to the officers/agency concerned put a stop this grossly cruel and unlawful activity. However, no legal action was taken against anyone.
Obviously no lessons have been learned. This time, however, I and the other animal lovers who are aware of the case (and others who may like to join us) demand that AWBI prosecute as per the animal protection laws/ABC Rules 2000 all who are involved in this cruel, illegal, activity. No person or organization, private or government, should be allowed to believe they are above the law. The dogs that were so cruelly displaced were protected by the law, and no one had the right to do what they did to them. The poor things have all probably died horrible deaths, or are lying somewhere in Manesar, injured, starving, frightened out of their minds! We cannot get them back because we don’t know where they were abandoned. The least we can do is ensure that what happened to them does not happen to other dogs in other military campuses or anywhere for that matter. The mood in the country is changing, and blatant violations of the laws by those who should be upholding them will no longer be tolerated by ordinary, law-abiding citizens!
How we proceed further will depend on what action AWBI takes in this matter. We await your response.
Thank you,
Sincerely,
Madhu Goyal
with
Mrs Mandy Seth
Mrs S Kaur
