This time around, dogs have been spared. So hallelujah for that. But a man and a saras – sarus crane – which he found injured near his farm in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, have shown us that the long arm of the law knows neither compassion nor common sense. Mohammed Arif (I’m sure the same thing would have happened if the farmer’s name was, say, Vijay Sharma), found the hurt crane in his village, Mandkha, last February. The saras’ leg was damaged and Arif nursed it back to health.
Ever since, the bird has not only flown to the jungle, but has also flown back in the evenings – of its own free will – to eat food and roam around outside his rescuer’s home. Videos of the duo show the crane flying about, flying away and then flying back to Arif. A true free bird, moving around as it pleases.
But this was too much of a crime for the authorities and animal rights bodies. As soon as Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav posted pictures with Arif and the saras, the authorities reached the latter’s place, captured the unsuspecting bird and placed it in the Raebareli sanctuary. Why? Because Arif had apparently broken the law by feeding and keeping a sarus – something prohibited under Schedule 3 of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.
The captured bird then flew out of the Raebareli sanctuary and was found by a villager half-a-kilometre away, being chased by feral dogs. Only to be shifted to a cage in the Kanpur Zoo.
There is an especially bitter irony that a bird that was roaming around free, has now been ‘saved’ from its freedom and the affection of a human and the possibility of never being hungry, only to be placed in the protective surroundings of a cage. We know about caged parrots. Now we have a caged crane to the aviary. Oh, and just in case I forgot to mention, Arif has now also been booked under the Wildlife Protection Act.
Laws and rules are fine, necessary – they are implemented equally or at all. In this country, sometimes it seems that we either we don’t implement laws at all, or we implement them when they shouldn’t be implemented. There doesn’t seem to be much of a middle ground. The Wildlife Protection Act is much required. But surely its existence is to ensure that no free animal goes hungry or is humanly harmed. Our wildlife protection authorities don’t seem to show much concern when it comes to the cows who were reported to have been found starving and dead in cow shelters in UP’s Etah and Etawah. Or, for that matter, seemed to be perturbed by the fact that, according to an official response to an RTI query, Rs1.1 crore set aside for tiger conservation in Kaziranga, Assam, was used by the welcoming committee for a former president.
The authorities’ sudden-found love for cranes would ring true if they had bothered to save the Dhanauri wetlands, a prime habitat of the sarus in Thasrana village in UP. But that probably will be such a waste of money and time, when one can earn an easier brownie point by capturing a free bird instead.
Cheetahs, peacocks, Labradors… now cranes. It’s touching to see how much animals are loved with official intensity. If only we could stop caging life and slapping cases on humans with a propensity to true kindness.
