New Delhi, India: Ahead of International Animal Rights Day and Human Rights Day (10 December), dozens of supporters of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India and Aashray Foundation wearing animal masks, Modi jackets, white kurtas, and sarees while carrying signs reading ‘Stronger Penalties for Cruelty, Please,’ gathered at Jantar Mantar on Friday.
Their purpose was to request Prime Minister Narendra Modi to increase the penalties for cruelty to animals. The PETA India supporters, representing cows, dogs, monkeys, mice, and other species, also unfurled a giant banner reading, “Dear PM Modi, Please Increase Penalties for Cruelty to Animals” and encouraged passersby to sign a petition pushing for jail time, meaningful fines, mandatory counselling, and a ban on future contact with animals for animal abusers.
The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act was passed in 1960. Now over sixty years old, it is severely outdated, and the penalties it prescribes are so minimal – as low as Rs 10 and a maximum of only Rs 50 for a first offense – that they fail to deter perpetrators. (The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, and Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, however, prescribe stronger punishments for cruelty to animals.)
“For the abusers convicted of poisoning dogs, burning cows with acid, and other shocking acts of cruelty, a paltry fine under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act is hardly a penalty at all,” says PETA India Campaigns Coordinator Atharva Deshmukh. “PETA India and compassionate citizens request Prime Minister Modi to ensure that animal abusers receive punishments proportionate with their crimes.”
PETA India recommends that perpetrators of animal abuse undergo psychiatric evaluation and receive counselling, as abusing animals indicates a deep psychological disturbance. Research shows that people who commit acts of cruelty to animals are often repeat offenders who move on to hurting other animals, including humans. A study published in Forensic Research & Criminology International Journal stated, “Those who engage in cruelty to animals were [three] times more likely to commit other crimes, including murder, rape, robbery, assault, harassment, threats, and drug/substance abuse.”
PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
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