Man booked for riding horse in drunken state

A man has landed in trouble for riding his horse allegedly in an inebriated condition through the busy city roads here and torturing the animal which abruptly halted midway. 

The police booked the man for torturing the animal. According to police, the 42-year-old man rode his horse through the Killippalam-Karamana road here on Sunday night after consuming liquor. 

The 'royal ride' turned a "public nuisance" when the horse halted abruptly when it reached a junction with the rider, creating traffic problem and drawing the police attention. 

Even after the police intervened, the horse declined to make its move and personnel of Mounted Police were called in to tackle the situation. 

Police said the man had been charged under sections 289 and 429 of Indian Penal Code and provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty Against Animal Act. The owner of the horse used to rent out it for film shootings. The animal appeared to be in an exhausted condition as it was flogged by its owner,police said. 

Kumar was released on personal bail after registering the case against him, sources said. 

http://www.business-standard.com/generalnews/news/man-booked-for-riding-horse-in-drunken-state/25266/ 

Citizens rally for Mumbai's tired horses

MUMBAI: A group of citizens and animal rights NGOs have come together to collect 10,000 signatures in order to stop cruelty towards horses in the city and bring about a ban on Victoria horse carriages. The commencement of the monsoon in the city adds to the distress of over 250 horses, which are left illegally tied up in the open on city beaches, without proper stables, and hence ruthlessly exposed to the elements.

Without proper rest at night, these horses, many of them suffering from physical ailments, are forced to pull carriages or used to give joyrides during the day, worsening their already sorry state.

Among the citizens collecting signatures for this cause is Hersh Welling, who said that a memorandum created by the group will be given to the chief minister, municipal commissioner and other top officials, exhorting them to help stop such animal cruelty.

"More than 80% of Mumbai's horses are tied to posts at beaches, garbage dumps, street sides, dump yards and public spaces. These animals have no option but to brave the monsoon without any shelter," said Ambika Hiranandani, advocate and animal activist.

Another animal lover, Mili Gandhi, said, "On Dadar beach, the horses are tied near the shore. They have to deal with the high tide and then also endure the monsoon out in the cold. The horses are practically drowning. And after all this, they have to work for hours on end. Such torture should not be allowed in our city."

"It is about time we stop the carriages and joyrides. The people of Mumbai must come together and speak for the animals and our city," added Vandana Kripalani, a campaigner of NGO Mumbai for Horses.

In an ongoing public interest litigation in the Bombay high court, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had also stated that most of these illegal stables at Nariman Point, Dadar, Bhandup, Andheri and parts of other suburbs were absolutely dirty, pathetic and not fit for animals. The signature campaign should now hopefully end the horses' pain.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Citizens-rally-for-Mumbais-tired-horses/articleshow/14038719.cms

‘Demand better retired life for him’

MUMBAI: Ambika Hiranandani, an animal rights activist and lawyer, has urged the BSPCA and the horse survey team to relocate Superman to a better place for the last few years of his life. "The story of Superman is typical of countless other horses who are forced to work long hours and live in filthy stables," she says. "Superman is in extremely delicate health."

The horse's last assignment was over a year ago for serial Jhansi Ki Rani. "He was ridden by a young girl who was playing the child queen, but his health was bad even during the shooting," says animal activist Roxanne Davur of NGO Terra Anima. "If horses work so hard to earn for their masters, they should also be allowed to retire at right time."

According to BSPCA secretary Lt Colonel J C Khanna, a horse should be retired at 22 years, which is the equivalent to 60 in human beings.

Manilal Valliyate, director of veterinary affairs of PETA India, said: "Since Sholay was released, I have grown from a baby into an adult, become a husband and a father and graduated from vet school, while this poor horse has been spending his life at shoots. He would have been whipped and forced to drag heavy loads beyond his physical capacity," he says. Valliyate feels that the "archaic" practice of using horses to haul carriages needs to be done away with.

Incidentally, Sholay heroine Hema Malini wrote in 2009 to then minister of environment and forests Jairam Ramesh on behalf of PETA India to stop the use of horse carriages in Mumbai. In January, the HC ordered to form a special panel to survey and study the health of all workhorses and condition of stables. 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Demand-better-retired-life-for-him/articleshow/12487331.cms

 

Owners flout ban on horse ride in plateau

PUNE: An investigation by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) on Thursday revealed that horse rides are on offer at the volcanic plateau in Panchgani, popularly known as 'table land', despite a ban imposed by the Bombay High Court in 2002.

The investigation was conducted following the death of the school student, Tanushree Hedge, on Wednesday. The board found that neither the horse nor the handler was registered with the AWBI.

No medical examination of the handler was conducted and there was no post-mortem of the horse, said animal welfare officer Manoj Oswal. The board official also claimed that the animal did not die in the accident but breathed its last because its owners had tied the horse's legs and dumped it in the valley to die.

Oswal, who conducted the investigation, told TOI it was shocking that the horse, which was badly injured, was killed by the owners when they realised the animal will be of no use. "The investigation has revealed that there is not a single veterinary doctor to treat horses in Mahabaleshwar-Panchgani area and most of them depend on quacks," he said.

"There are around 160 horses used for joyrides in this area, whereas the Bombay High Court had banned horse rides on the plateau, because of the ecology and safety aspect," he said.

Oswal said the accident showed that it was the reluctance of the horse owners to follow precautions and the direction of the AWBI and the police. "We can book a case under IPC Section 286, for negligence by the management in respect to animals causing grievous injury to human beings," he said.

Oswal said the horse owners did not take proper care of the animals and the handlers were not properly trained. "Three years ago, a camp was held for the horse owners on the safety aspect. The horses are treated cruelly and thorny bits are fitted in the horse's mouth," he said.

Oswal said, "After speaking to eyewitnesses, we found that the five girls sat on the horse cart and one of the girl pulled the harness of the horse which was given by the handler. The horse moved backwards and in panic the girl again pulled the harness. By the time the handler could control the situation, the accident had happened."

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The Panchgani Municipal Council has given strict orders to implement the ban imposed by the Bombay High Court in 2002 barring horse buggies and horses on the ecologically sensitive Panchgani plateau.

Chief executive officer of the Panchgani Municipal Council Asha Raut told TOI, "Despite the ban, horse ride was offered on the table land. The horse owners were flouting the order so we have given strict direction to stop horse rides here."

To Kolaba fort, a cruel ride

Horses at Alibaug beach navigate their way through waist-deep seawater to ferry tourists to the fort

 

Horse owners in the popular holiday destination of Alibaug believe it is an innocuous way to earn their livelihood. But animal lovers describe it as cruelty in the garb of tourism and have lodged a complaint with district authorities of Raigad, leading to an inquiry. Horses at Alibaug beach are being forced to ferry tourists through waist-deep sea to and from the Kolaba fort. 

After receiving a tipoff from some tourists, the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO) wrote to authorities, along with photographic evidence showing two horses at Alibaug beach pulling a cart full of people from the beach, navigating their way through waist-deep seawater to reach the fort.

 “The current abuse of horses at Alibaug is absolutely unethical and cruel. Such activities are detrimental to the promotion of tourism in the country,” Arpan Sharma, convenor, FIAPO, said in the letter, seeking an immediate end to the activity.

When Newsline visited the spot, 30 to 40 horse carts — each with two horses — were found to be operating on the Alibaug beach stretch. Built in 1600s, Kolaba Fort — once a chief naval station during Shivaji’s time — lies in the sea at a distance of over a km from the beach. The retreat of water during low tide makes the fort accessible by foot. 

Activities at the beach begin around 2 pm, when the low tide sets in, and go on till dark. “For many years, since Chowpatty came up in 1984, tourists crossed the sea on foot to reach the fort because the water does not go above the waist during the low tide. These rides started only about five to six years ago,” said Gharat Kalsi, who has been riding horse carts for 15-20 years. 

The wobbly ride to the fort lasts about 15 minutes, during which horses are whipped periodically as they try to make their way through the seawater, which at one point, reaches dangerously close to nape of the horses’ neck. 

Horses make an estimated 10 such trips a day, earning the owner Rs 150 per person for a return ride. Drivers insist that they ply no more than five people at one time but Newsline witnessed many violations of this self-imposed rule, with a child or two ‘extra’ on each cart. Though boats are available, the horse ride seems to be more popular among the tourists. 

Experts say horses are good swimmers and take naturally to sweet water but not saline. “The salt water cause dryness of the hoof, resulting in cracks on their wall and subsequently rendering the horses lame,” Dr Manilal Valliyate, director of veterinary affairs, PETA said. 

Additionally, horses panic when they cannot see the path in front of them. “When they are forced to walk through water they are unable to see the depth and height of the ground. A misjudgment by the horse may result in fatal injuries,” Valliyate said. External injuries to the horses can also cause laminitis, a foot condition causing acute pain. 

Thane Society of Prevention of Cruelty to animal’s equine expert, Dr Suhas Rane, who visited the spot, said, “The health of the horses is not up to the mark. According to preliminary observations, some horses showed signs of the beginning of a skin infection due to the saline water. Also, from what I gathered from speaking to the horse owners, the animals are not getting proper nutritious diet, which the cart owners cannot afford.” 

Rane observed that although the horses did not show signs of acute distress or disease, the activity must be put to stop. “Entering the sea water regularly can be detrimental to the horses. Also, carrying such heavy load into the water is an abuse,” he said. 

The complaint weighs heavy even from a legal stand point, say experts, with FIAPO rightly pointing out that it is in contravention of Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act 1960. 

Anjali Sharma, legal advisor to the animal welfare board of India (AWBI), argued that cruelty to animals does not only mean denying nourishment or causing phsyical abuse but also mental trauma.” The tenet of the law is that every animal should be allowed to express itself and do what comes naturally to it. This is not natural. Why do something so peculiar when other options like boats are available? In trying to offer a novel experience, horse owners are exploiting the animals,” she said. 

Taking cognisance of the complaint, Raigad district collector H K Jawale has initiated an inquiry. “The complaint has been officially forwarded to the animal husbandry department, chief executive officer of the zilla parishad as well as the superintendent of police to investigate,” resident deputy collector Jagannath Veerkar said.

Mumbai Journal: Let’s Not Forget Our Wildlife

 Animal activists, lawyers and vets say it’s a warped attitude that separates animals along the lines of a caste system. Shown, a horse carriage seen outside the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai on Oct. 4, 2011.

Sunday evenings, single horse-drawn Victorias dash along the seafront by the Taj hotel, carrying in their rickety neon-lit carriages loads of up to 12 people. As the horses slow to a trot to evade whizzing traffic, the carriages appear, as so many colonial relics tend to do, as yet another sad Mumbai anachronism, one that should have met its maker perhaps decades earlier. Indeed, if a Public Interest Litigation goes according to plan, the horse-drawn carriages will soon be phased out, their exhausted, abused carriers sent to rehabilitation homes outside the city, and their owners provided with other means of employment.

On one side, NGOs and animal activists argue that the horses, subject to inhumane working conditions, have no place in a city like Mumbai (tellingly, the local municipal corporation hasn’t issued a license for a horse stable since 1974.) On the other, the Victoria owners argue that these animals provide their only means of income, one that isn’t nearly enough to look after the wellbeing of their families and an animal. “The animal is last on the list because if you want to compromise on something, if you want to cut down, then definitely what is being deducted is what you spend on the animal’s feed,” says vet Manilal Valliyate of PETA India, who has worked extensively with these horses and horse owners. Even the well-intentioned owners, he adds, must make the excruciating choice that most often doesn’t fall in favor of the animal.

Their tussle represents Mumbai’s increasingly tortured relationship with animals, and more significantly our vastly complicated attitude towards animals, wild, working and domesticated. As the near extinction of our tigers and the dilapidated state of our local zoo make abundantly clear, we’ve strayed far from Mahatma Gandhi’s oft-quoted moral check that “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.” Peculiarly, India’s animal protection laws – the Animal Welfare Act and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act – are some of the most comprehensive and oldest in the world. The PCA, drafted in 1960, was among the first to grant “performing” animals the right to food, water and shelter, while the AWA gives them the “freedom to express normal behaviour for the species.” A proposed amendment to the AWA, still awaiting approval in Parliament, will significantly increase fines for animal abuse, up from a minimum of 50 rupees ($1) to as high as 100,000 rupees and imprisonment.

For once, India’s laws are not the obstacle. Instead, animal activists, lawyers and vets say it’s a warped attitude that separates animals along the lines of a caste system. Cows, deemed holy, elephants, rats or any creature that either shares a place in the pantheon of our gods or in our mythological tradition, sit high on the totem pole. Dogs and horses, seemingly bereft of status and thus protection, are much lower. Maazie Dallas, an animal therapist who has fought for animal rights for the last 15 years, blames religious classification. “I find the same people who see an elephant on the road and give it money, will not help a stray dog. With an elephant, it reminds them of ganpati [Ganesh], so it comes down to thinking things might go better for me if I give the guy 10 rupees. The same goes for cows,” she says. “And it’s educated people who do this.”

For others, it’s a simpler moral issue. With millions of Indians homeless and malnourished, humans, not animals, should be given first priority. That we haven’t yet been able to accomplish this is beside the point; it’s license enough to abuse and neglect animals, something painfully evident at Mumbai’s zoo, where bears and tigers are viewed for entertainment rather than educational purposes. Visit Byculla Zoo and you’ll see visitors throwing stones and litter at the listless inmates, many of whom look sick and underfed. The zoo, incidentally, is now being investigated on claims of animal cruelty.

At a recent session at the Jaipur Literature Festival, India’s most famous tiger advocate, Valmik Thapar, said tigers will only flourish if state chief ministers exert their authority and make conservation their pet project. A former chief minister of Rajasthan, sitting in the audience, offered this riposte: politicians, she said, only care about the vote bank, and vote banks are made of people, not animals. It wasn’t right she argued, but it was the reality. She may well have been speaking of the fate of all animals in India.

“There is no doubt at all that the veneration Indians had for nature is being eroded,” says Bittu Sahgal, a renowned environmental activist and founder of Sanctuary Asia magazine. “We worship Durga, yet allow the tiger to be killed. We worship Ganesh, yet the ivory trade thrives. We worship Shiv, yet the snake skin trade is booming. What most Indians, and certainly our planners, do not realize is that giving wild species the space to survive is no ‘charity.’”

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/01/27/mumbai-journal-lets-not-forget-our-wildlife/ 

Victoria horse collapses near Gateway

MUMBAI: A horse pulling a Victoria collapsed and got injured in front of The Table restaurant, near the Gateway of India on Sunday.

Onlookers gathered as the horse driver yanked hard to pull the horse up as it was splayed across the middle of the road. The horse tried twice to stand up, only to hear the gasps of onlookers as it slammed back down with a thud against the pavement, with its rear left shoes dangling on its leg by one nail.

The horse fell as it had been fitted with an improper shoe, which had loosened and not been was not changed on timeby the horse's guardians in time. A case has been registered under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

One observer, Tammy Khajotia, who is a passionate horse rider herself, was able to subdue and calm the horse while waiting for the BSPCA (Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) to come by with a van, over an hour after the initial call was made.

The horse had clearly visible cuts and was bleeding from 3 of its legs, and frothing at the mouth perpetually, according to the animal lover, Khajotia. A police complaint was registered at Colaba police station, under Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

Quote from Tammy: "As an animal lover, and particularly an avid rider, it is heartbreaking to see such flippant and careless treatment of horses in Mumbai is still a day to day reality. I could tell how the horse survived in complete fear of the drivers, so much so that just them touching the horse would have him on edge, and burying his head in my arms".

‘Many Thane horses don’t have licences’

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/many-thane-horses-dont-have-licences/884127/1

The death of Sheru, a nine-year old horse which was hit by a speeding bus on November 30, has again highlighted the plight of horses in Thane, with animal lovers alleging that many of the horse carriages don’t possess valid licences despite an Animal Welfare Board of India(AWBI) directive.

Sheru and its owner were headed to a fodder dealer's shop, with the horse pulling a small cart, when a bus hit them. The impact threw Sheru to the other side of the road and the owner fell on the footpath, both suffering injuries. The animal was taken to hospital by the Thane Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) while the owner was accompanied by a member of their team to lodge an FIR.

However, despite receiving medication and accepting food and water, Sheru died the next day.

“Our equine expert Dr Suhas Rane diagnosed a probable break in Sheru's lower spine and we knew the chances were slim but we tried our best to give him some relief,” said Shakuntala Majhumdar, secretary, Thane SPCA.Majhumdar said horses in Thane are mainly used to pull carriages and give joyrides individually, for marriage and other celebration processions but do not possess valid licenses.

In a June 2010 letter by the AWBI to the district collector of Thane and Thane SPCA, the Board said, “It has come to the notice of the AWBI that over the past five years, the horses used for joyrides in various places of Thane have not been issued valid licences. Consequently, many cases of horses being abandoned with severe injuries have been reported from these areas. Since horses used for joyriding qualify as performing animals, each horse owner is supposed to register their animals with the AWBI under the Performing Animals Registration Rules.”

The letter says each horse must be given a health check-up and vaccination for any diseases before licences are issued to them.

In Thane, the authority to provide licences is held by the Assistant Commissioner of Police. “However, through an RTI query I filed recently, I found that no licences have been given since 2008. We had to force the horse owners to have their horses vaccinated,” said Majhumdar.

Activists renew call for ban on ‘Victorias’

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Activists-renew-call-for-ban-on-Victorias/articleshow/10747316.cms

MUMBAI: Monday night's incident, where an exhausted horse collapsed while pulling a carriage with eight persons near the Gateway of India, has once again highlighted the pitiable conditions of working animals in the city.

Animal activists have long been demanding a total ban of open-air carriages or 'Victorias' in Mumbai as the practice is cruel to horses. A PIL filed by the Animals and Birds Charitable Trust in this regard is also being heard in the Bombay high court.

"The horse which had collapsed near Gateway is now being treated at our animal hospital in Parel. It looks weak, with a visible limp due to injuries on its hind legs," said Lt Colonel J C Khanna, secretary of Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BSPCA).  

Khanna is of the view that if all the rules related to 'Victorias' are not followed by horse owners and handlers, then it would be best to abolish horse-drawn carriages from the city. "Just 20 days ago, BSPCA had notified all 170 'Victoria' owners about the ongoing HC case and cautioned them to be sensitive towards the horses, or face a ban," he added.

Vandana Kriplani, an activist with Animals Matter To Me (AMTM), who first rushed to the aid of the fallen horse, said, "These horses undergo a lot of cruelty on the roads and in their unhygienic stables. They are often malnourished, thirsty, and yet forced to trot for long hours to entertain tourists."

Another activist, Hoshang Billimoria, added, "During weekends, I have often seen 'Victorias' plying in south Mumbai even after midnight in order to cater to eager tourists. With no policing on their handlers, the poor horses are literally being flogged to death for quick profits."