An employee at a pet shelter and boarding in Chennai has been booked after he was caught on CCTV camera violently hitting a dog in its gut, leading to the animal’s death. The deceased dog’s owner Sharmila (29), had travelled to Germany and so she had taken her dog to a pet shelter in Chennai while she was abroad. However, a few days after she dropped off her dog, she was informed that her dog had died after a heart attack. Sharmila came back to Chennai but after the dog was buried, she decided to seek CCTV footage to find out what exactly happened to the dog. Her suspicions were confirmed, and CCTV showed that her dog was beaten violently before its death.
CCTV footage from March 3, the day of the incident, shows a man, who seems to be working at a shelter named Pet Paws, walking up to a dog seen wearing a cone. He punches the animal hard in its stomach, causing the dog to stumble due to the impact. The dog tries to get away and stands in a corner. Two other animals also in the room cower away from the man. The CCTV footage shows that the man seems to have hit the dog for defecating inside the room, as the man then brings a mop to wipe the floor. The dog that was beaten can be seen standing weakly in the corner of the room till the man finishes cleaning up the floor. The dog then stumbles into the middle of the room, and vomits.
Once she saw the video, Sharmila approached the Velachery police station and filed a complaint against the pet shelter. She alleged that the brutal blow on her dog had led to its death. Based on her complaint, an FIR has been registered under Sections 429 (Mischief by killing or maiming cattle, etc) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 11(1)(a) (Treating animals cruelly) of The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and three people — Ram, who is the owner, Suraj (believed to be the man in the video), and Martin — have been booked, and an investigation is underway.
Speaking to TNM, the owner of the shelter Ram said, "I don't decline that such an incident took place, it is a very unfortunate one and I am completely against what happened. He is someone who plays with pets and is seen playing with them even in this footage. But he had hit the dog out of frustration or something, which is wrong. "We are legally fighting this issue and action has been taken against him. As the police asked us not to let him go anywhere, he is under my custody. The place has been temporarily shut down."
The police said that a post-mortem of the dog will be carried out, based on the results of which further action will be taken.
Meanwhile, another incident of violence against a pet dog was reported from Perumbakkam in Chennai, where a man has been accused of ‘shooting’ a pet dog. Suganya (37) noticed in the evening of March 7 that her dog was bleeding. After trying remedies at home, assuming that it must have been caused due to thorns, she and her husband took their pet to a veterinary clinic. However, when the bleeding did not stop even after initial treatment, they went in for an X-ray to find a foreign particle lodged inside the dog’s body.
While the couple filed a complaint saying that it was a bullet, police said that the foreign object had been sent for a forensic examination. Based on their complaint, an FIR has been registered under section 11 (Treating animals cruelly) of The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and a probe is underway. Meanwhile, the dog is under treatment at a private veterinary hospital in Semmenchery.
Trigger warning, visuals in the tweet below are disturbing.
Trigger warning.
— Mugilan Chandrakumar (@Mugilan__C) March 11, 2022
CCTV footage of a Care taker in a private pet boarding centre seen punching a pet dog in the chest area surfaces.
Activist allege that the pet dog died of heart attack shortly after punched by the attender. A complaint has been filed with Velachery police. pic.twitter.com/RoL1RS4gtZ
(Editor's note: An earlier version of this article had a police version that identified the person seen in the video as the owner of the shelter. It was later clarified that the person is an employee at the shelter. The error has been corrected.)