ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2004

Butchers beat Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep K. Nath

VISAKHAPATNAM, India--Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep Kumar Nath was “severely and brutally beaten” on January 19 by “five youths who are butchers in profession,” Nath e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Nath was accosted, he said, as he “was seeking help from the police by mobile telephone to stop the illegal slaughtering of five cows and two calves who were being taken by two laborers to the slaughterhouse.”

The attack came nine days after Visakhapatnam police raided two slaughterhouses that had been the subject of frequent Visakha SPCA complaints.

Nath received hospital treatment for cuts and bruises. Two of the five assailants, named Siddique and Mastan, were arrested and criminally charged, Nath said.

Nath has experienced violence before. On April 2, 2000 persons believed to have been prosecuted for illegal slaughter torched the Visakha SPCA cattle shelter, and on Christmas Eve, 2000 a mob ransacked the Visakha SPCA dog sterilization clinic. Th mob was allegedly led by the former city dog-killers, who lost their jobs as result of the sterilization program.

Assaults on Indian humane workers, usually by illegal butchers and cattle traffickers, are frequent, and often deadly.

Also on April 2, 2000, for example, illegal cattle traffickers savagely beat humane investigator Prakash Amrutlal Shah near Disa, Gujarat. Shah died from his injuries eight days later.

Lalit Jain, 32, a prosecutor of illegal cow-slaughter cases in Bhiwandi, near Mumbai in Mahar-ashtra, was shot on April 24, 2002 by three men in an auto rickshaw.

A mob of illegal butchers and beef-traders on September 13, 2002 dragged Animal Welfare Board of India animal welfare officer Abdul Sattar Sheikh out of a police station in the Bandra district of Mumbai and beat him with rocks and iron bars. Sattar Sheikh suffered multiple broken bones and probable permanent disabilities.

Almost a year to the day later, Sattar Sheikh’s supervisor Abral Qureshi was allegedly assaulted inside a police station in the Thane district of Mumbai. Qureshi’s wife Zeenat told the Times of India that a police inspector hit Qureshi “on his head, and a butcher who had come to the police station stabbed him in the stomach.”

A veterinarian and female staff, not named, were reportedly assaulted in a May 6, 2003 mob attack on the Jaigopal Garodia Jinendra People for Animals Shelter near Chennai.

The mob cut the PfA telephone line to prevent the victims from calling help, beat the shelter animals, tried to poison the dogs on the premises, and stole 15 cattle who were seized a month earlier from a truck that was illegally taking them to slaughter in Kerala.