A day after People for Animals, an animal rights organisation, filed a complaint alleging that someone had eaten a pet dog after abducting it and beating it to death, Gurgaon police detained the prime suspect in the case. The suspect reportedly confessed to consuming dog meat. However, he denied eating the dog that was allegedly abducted, a Hindustan Times report stated.
Police detained the suspect, identified as Philip, from DLF Phase-1’s Sikanderpur area on Wednesday. They told Hindustan Times (HT) that he has not been arrested as the complaint is still being investigated.
The police filed an FIR based on a complaint received from Amit Chaudhery, the president of the Gurgaon chapter of People for Animals. The FIR was filed under sections 379 (theft) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming an animal) of the Indian Penal Code and under section 11 (1) (a) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
Chaudhery registered the police complaint after being contacted by the owner of the dog, Anupama Srivastava. A resident of Gurgaon’s DLF Phase-II area, Srivastava noticed that her dog Brownie, was missing on April 1, 2017. She first tried to find the dog by talking to people in the neighbourhood and then filed a missing complaint with the police on April 17.
It was only after Srivastava had printed 2,000 posters of Brownie and had also announced a reward of ₹5,000 for providing information on the pet that she was contacted by two persons who claimed to know its whereabouts. The duo claimed that the pet was taken to a house near Sikanderpur village community centre with its mouth and legs tied and was beaten to death. Srivastava then sought Chaudhery’s help.
A video, which shows locals confronting the suspects in a room, was also circulated after the police filed an FIR. One of the videos, which HT saw, shows at least 12 people in a room eating meat and consuming liquor. According to the paper, a suspect is heard saying that they ‘ate doggy’, in the video. However, the police did not reveal the identity of the persons (who shot the video) to the paper.
“In the videos, there is a talk of eating some meat but we have to check whether it is dog (meat),” the SHO of DLF Phase-II police station told the paper. A total of five videos are being investigated, according to an HT report.
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