An end to the chase?

Earlier this week, through our social media pages, we were witness to one of the most horrifying instances of animal cruelty — a low-resolution video of a man holding a brown pup by the scruff, smiling at the camera before throwing the animal off the roof. The video  follows the dog until it hits the ground, several storeys below; it doesn’t die immediately, instead we hear its painful cries. As we watched the video, all we could hope, was for it to be a hoax or for the animal to have been saved.

Mere hours after the video surfaced, we began following Shravan Krishnan, animal activist from Chennai, and his efforts to catch the killer. It was at 4.24 pm on Monday that Shravan found the video circulating and shared it. Now, we are told, they are very close to catching the accused — Gautam Sudharshan and Ashish Pal, two final year MBBS students from the Madha Medical College in Kundrathur, who have been on the run since. Shravan along with two other animal right activists Jennifer Jacob and Antony Rubin have been actively working with the police in locating the accused.

Tuesday morning, an FIR was filed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. “We came across the video on Monday after people began tagging me on it. Immediately after that, Antony met the police commissioner to see if the cyber unit could trace the origin of the video. Fortunately, students from the college themselves identified the culprits and we sent that information to the police. The police spoke to the chairman of the college as well — who in turn spoke to the parents — demanding that the boys turn themselves in at the police station. That should happen today,” said Shravan.

Social media has been crucial in the investigation. The kind of attention the story has received has helped matters move forward, says Antony. “When I went to the police commissioner to file the complaint, we only had the one video to go on with. Social media has been very powerful and we received a lot of leads because of the posts Shravan made. There were no NGOs involved and it was not just the three of us; it was the whole city who solved it,” Antony said.

What they want to establish through this incident, he added, was that no one is exempt from punishment — “The police have assembled two teams who have gone to the hometowns of the accused.” For them, the incident is also a victory for animal rights — “The Prevention of Animal Cruelty is a very outdated law, which fines the person a mere 50 rupees. Our success in bringing the culprits to justice can help update the act and even push the bill that’s already in the parliament forward,” Shravan said hoping for stricter laws to punish those who abuse animals.