Ahmedabad's missing animals mystery: Panjarapol fined 8 lakh

AHMEDABAD: A local court in Kalol, Gandhinagar, has ordered the Kalol Panjarapol (cattle pound) to pay Rs 8 lakh to an animal trader as compensation for the loss of nearly 700 goats and sheep. The animals had been sent to the cattle pound after police seized them from some trucks.
The court had conducted an inquiry on the Gujarat high court’s order.The HC had fined the panjarapol Rs 50,000 for not returning the animals to their owner despite repeated court orders. The pound was also rapped for its carelessness that led to the disappearance of the animals. The owner alleged that the panjarapol authorities were not stating the truth about the missing animals.
The trucks of the city-based animal trader, Janu Habib, were seized for overloading and 705 animals were sent to the pound. Habib moved court for the animals’ custody. Before the HC, the panjarapol supervisors said that only 16 of these animals survived and the rest had perished because of food poisoning. However, during the inquiry, the panjarapol authorities and a veterinarian came up with a different reason — the animals died of various diseases and not due to eating poisonous fodder as they had earlier claimed in the HC. Habib’s lawyer Shamshad Pathan said that they suspected foul play because only the goats and sheep, and not cows, had supposedly died of food poisoning.