Mumbai: An FIR has been lodged against a housekeeping staff of a residential building in Powai for allegedly relocating kittens who were only two-week-old and dumping them at a construction site.
The complaint was lodged by Neha Sharma outside whose flat on the eighth floor of the Everest Heights, Lakehomes Society, a community cat had been raising her two newborns. Sharma said in her statement at the Powai police station that residents had been expressing their displeasure on Whatsapp groups at the lactating cat being fed and given shelter. On September 4, around 3 pm, she noticed that the kittens had gone missing.
Sharma and her son started searching for the missing kittens when the mother cat came desperately searching for them outside their flat and whining. The complaint said that initially she was told upon enquiries that the animals had been shifted to another area in the building. When she could not locate them, on repeated enquiries she learnt that a housekeeping staff had relocated them. The accused, she said, misled her on the spot where he had left them and finally said that he had left them in a cardboard box in a nearby construction site. Sharma then approached the police on Wednesday, as all attempts to find the kittens failed.
The man, Ramachandran, has been booked under a provision of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act pertaining to abandoning an animal in circumstances likely to render it pain through starvation or thirst and under the IPC.
