The Supreme Court has dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which sought declaration of the entire animal kingdom, including the avian and aquatic species as ‘legal entities,’ having a distinct persona with corresponding rights of a living person.
The Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice J.B. Pardiwala observed that it cannot entertain the writ petition in its extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Constitution.
Filed by an Allahabad-based NGO, People’s Charioteer Organisation (PCO), the petition sought prevention of animal cruelty and strengthening of animal protection laws in the country.
It contended that in the past few months, a couple of cases showing cruelty towards animals have come to light, which have raised questions as to how humans have absolutely no respect for animals’ lives and how they could be absolutely devoid of sympathy.
Mentioning the elephant tragedy of Kerala and the sale of dog-meat in Nagaland, the plea submitted that
such incidents raised an important question as to whether the laws in existence were sufficient enough to protect animals from possible abuse and cruelty.
In order to protect the animals from cruelty and abuse, as well as to ensure their welfare, the petition requested the Apex Court to declare all citizens of the country as “persons in loco parentis”.
It placed reliance on the Punjab and Haryana High Court verdict in the Karnail Singh & Ors vs State of Haryana case, along with the Uttarakhand High Court order in Narayan Dutt Bhatt vs Union of India & Ors case.
These judgements recognised all animals in the animal kingdom as legal entities and all citizens of these states were declared persons in loco parentis (in place of a parent), noted the plea, filed by Advocate Devesh Saxena, Secretary of Legal Cell of PCO.
Talking about the dearth of government data or any public record to track cases of Animal Abuse and Animal Cruelty in India, the plea alleged that NCRB has chosen not to publish specific data related to crimes against animals under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.
It further pointed out that NCRB reports did not have any separate records of statistical data related to crime against animals under Section 377, 428 and 429 of IPC.
The petition sought directions to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to report and publish data and statistics relating to animal cruelty/crimes against animals, including cases reported and convictions ordered thereupon, under various penal statutes in the Annual NCRB reports.
The petition further expressed grave concern over the probable ‘sadistic’ evolution of perpetrators of animal cruelty, which was very likely to harm humans as well.
It mentioned Zoosadism, a psychological disorder, in which a person derived pleasure from inflicting cruelty to animals.
It said the acts of cruelty to animals were often indicative of a deep mental disturbance and animal abusers often moved on to harming humans.
In such circumstances, laws that imposed a fine of Rs 50 would not even teach the offender a lesson, let alone prevent others from acting the same way. Such light laws were not only harmful to the society and animals, but had certain legal implications as well, noted the plea.
(Case title: People’s Charioteer Organisation vs Union of India)