Bengaluru resident Sonniya Bindumathi had the shock of her life when her neighbour started abusing and attacking her mother and her earlier this week for sheltering dogs in their house.
“On Monday morning, around 6:30 am, my neighbour and his wife ganged up outside my house and started used filthy language on my mother who was feeding street dogs. They asked us to stop petting and keeping dogs in our house. This has been going on for more than a month. Many times the husband had pelted stones at my mother while she fed the street dogs outside,” Sonniya told The News Minute.
Sonniya and her mother Sujatha live in the Hennur area of the city. Her father was a veterinary doctor who ran an animal shelter from 2003 until he died in March 2015. Now, Sonniya is a pet-sitter for her friends’ dogs and feeds around five street dogs.
“My neighbours started a fight on the street and about 15-20 people were witness to it. The heated argument escalated to a fight between the couple and my mother. To the extent that he abused my father saying he might have ‘eloped with another girl’. When my mother retorted, he flashed his private parts to my mother in front of other people and his wife as well,” she alleged.
“They also came into our house, and he tried to molest my mother. I got angry and that is when I punched him. I have captured a video of the fight inside my house but when Babu realised I was recording he snatched the phone from me and ran to his house,” she claimed.
Three hours after the fight, the two parties went to Hennur police station to file a complaint.
Hennur police inspector Prasad told The News Minute that the wife had lodged a complaint saying that Sonniya’s dogs bark and smell badly which has been disturbing them. Prasad said that Sonniya's complaint had been registered in the Non-Cognisable Register.
However, Sonniya has alleged that the police too were abusive. “Police officials asked me to write the complaint in Kannada, but when I said I can’t write or read the language, they offered to write for me. But when I asked for a copy of the complaint the officials refused to give me one,” she alleged.
Asked about the allegations of molestation, Prasad said no such allegation had been made by Sonniya in her complaint.
Sonniya said that her family had been keeping the dogs in her house after taking the house owner’s permission, and added that they only fed street dogs out of “compassion”.