Neither those who attacked animal rights activist Ayesha Christina Benn grievously nor the police personnel who failed in their duty to protect her should go unpunished
As reported in the media on March 23, Ms Ayesha Christina Benn, who runs an NGO that, among other things, neuters stray dogs and vaccinates them against rabies, was assaulted on March 21 by a mob when she went to pick up a stray dog from Signature View Apartments, Delhi, for sterilisation and vaccination. Her complaint, dated March 22, to the SHO, Mukherjee Nagar police station, gives a horrific account of the incident, detailing how she was assaulted and molested. If this makes shocking reading, so does her complaint of police behaviour during the entire episode. Its substance is that the police personnel present there not only stood silently throughout her ordeal but acted in a manner that was tantamount to encouraging the mob. They intervened only at the last moment and that too only to put her into the van and take her to the Mukherjee Nagar police station, where she was for a long time not allowed to contact her husband, Mr Rahul Ram, and denied the use of her mobile phone which the police personnel had taken away.
These are very serious charges which can no means be dismissed out of hand given the record of the conduct of a section of Delhi police in the matter of crimes against women. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the Commissioner of Police, Delhi, to order a credible, high-level inquiry into Ms Ayesha Christina Benn's allegations, make its report public and take exemplary action against police personnel who may be found guilty. The credibility of the probe has to be beyond question and action on the basis of its report, appropriately stringent. Nothing short of both will prevent another enormous blot being put on the escutcheon of Delhi Police. Equally important, he must also ensure that members of the mob involved in the attack on her are identified and effectively prosecuted under the relevant provisions of the law.
While the issue of what happened to Ms Benn merits serious attention on its own, the entire matter has another important aspect. She was not acting as an individual animal activist sterilising stray dogs and vaccinating them against rabies — both commendable ventures in themselves. She was participating, under formal authorisation from the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, in the implementation of the Animal Birth Control programme. The latter has been adopted by the Animal Welfare Board of India, which comes under the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, as the means to eradicate rabies from India and contain the population of stray dogs.
The importance of the programme can never be under-estimated. The Guidelines for Dog Population Management, jointly issued by the World Health Organisation and the World Society for the Protection of Animals in 1990, WHO's Technical Report Series 824 and Technical Report Series 931, among other documents, make it amply clear that the killing or mass removal of stray dogs has never succeeded in reducing their numbers or eradicating rabies. Both can only be achieved through the implementation of the ABC programme coupled with measures like effective garbage management, which removes a principal source of food for stray dogs, and their mass vaccination against rabies.
Given all this, the police had a responsibility not just to protect but assist Ms Benn in her sterilisation efforts. To say the least, the members of the force, present on the spot during the incident, grossly failed to perform their duty. One hopes that the credible inquiry that the Commissioner of Police needs to order will reveal the magnitude of such other failings they may be culpable of. The grievous attack on Ms Benn, if it goes unpunished, will encourage similar assaults on other persons doing what she has been doing. This in turn will undermine the implementation of a programme critically important to the country.