A woman and her friends in the northern Indian city of Moradabad have been charged under the Wildlife Protection Act for allegedly capturing and burning alive a feral cat after it crossed their path.
The incident came to light after Delhi’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau received a complaint about a video being shared online.
Police identified the suspect by only one name, Priya, and said she lived in Laluwala village in Uttar Pradesh. They said the woman and her friends filmed the act and shared the video on a social media platform.
Priya, who is reportedly in her early 30s, and her friends caught and killed the cat after it crossed their path in Moradabad’s Bhojpur area, police said on Tuesday. There is a widespread superstition in India that a cat passing one’s path brings bad luck.
Women can be seen in the video beating the animal, dousing it in petrol, and setting it on fire. They have been charged under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, which carries a penalty of up to three years in prison and a hefty fine for such acts of animal cruelty.
“We traced Priya after verifying the bike’s registration number seen in the video,” Moradabad divisional forest officer Suraj Kumar told The Times of India.
India has reported many cases of animal cruelty that led to police action.
A pregnant wild elephant died in the southern state of Kerala in 2020 after eating a pineapple planted with a firecracker that exploded. The wild animal ran into a nearby river after the blast and stayed there for hours, seemingly seeking relief for its severely injured mouth and tongue in the cool water.
In January this year, a man in Andhra Pradesh state’s Nellore region allegedly set a pet dog and a scooter on fire to settle a dispute over a damaged phone. The dog received severe injuries but survived.
In another incident of animal cruelty from 2023, a young man irritated by a stray dog’s barking in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura Sadar Bazaar poured petrol on the animal and set it on fire.
