A suspected foreign spy, a written message in ancient Chinese, a highly sensitive microchip, and a suspect who couldn’t be stopped at the border.
Ravidar Patil, the Mumbai police sub-inspector in charge of the case, was left scratching his head for answers. But first he had to find a place to confine this unusual prisoner.
So he approached a veterinary clinic in a major Indian city and asked them to obtain a list of “very sensitive and necessary” information about the suspect. It was a black pigeon that was hiding in a port where international ships were anchored.
“The police never came to check on the pigeons,” said Dr. Mayur Dhangar, the hospital’s director.
After eight months, the bird was finally released this week, and although its innocence of spying on China has long been confirmed by rigorous criminal operations, the prison doors were flung open only by newspaper reports, veterinary clinics, etc. This was after repeated letters to the police and intervention. From an animal rights organization.
The group PETA India celebrated the end of “unjust imprisonment”.
“At PETA India, we respond to 1,000 animal emergency calls a week, and this is the first case of a suspected spy who needs to be released,” said Meet Ashar, head of the organization’s cruelty response unit. Told.
Ashar said the incident left hospital staff in a dilemma. They didn’t want to expose healthy birds to sick or injured people, but “it was such a high-profile incident that we couldn’t even release the birds.” The charges in this case were very serious. ”
This is not the first time India has feared a feather invasion, but this incident was a sign of changing times and threats.
In 2014, authorities in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, at the center of tensions between India and Pakistan, arrested Hato near the border on similar charges.
This bird in Mumbai hinted at a new development. The bird appeared in a city not near a border dispute, and the Chinese inscriptions on its wings suggested a more sophisticated and powerful rival with which India has been grappling in recent years.
Inspector Patil, 39, had handled two animal cases so far in his 12-year career. One of the dogs was suspected of being poisoned, requiring a post-mortem, and the other was two dogs that died on the road. accident. Neither incident had any geopolitical implications.
But this time, “I had to ask my colleagues in the intelligence community for advice,” he said in a phone interview.
The bird had been spotted by security personnel from the Central Industrial Security Force, which monitors government facilities such as ports. It wasn’t the first time the pigeon had come under critical scrutiny, but staff on duty spotted the pigeon wandering alone. “The pigeon was just sitting there and everything looked suspicious to them. It had chips and rings on its legs,” Patil said. The security guard called the police.
Once Patil found a place to trap the bird, a slow search process began. And he began to piece together the clues.
The rings found in the bird’s feet, including the chipped one, were sent to a forensic laboratory.
“The chip contained location-coding details: what it was and where it came from,” he said.
“Nothing else suspicious was found,” he added.
He matched the details with information online and concluded that the pigeon was a competitive bird from Taiwan. He spoke with a security guard at the port, which primarily accepts oil ships carrying crude oil for refinery, and learned that Taiwanese vessels were among those docked there. He speculated that the bird probably arrived in Mumbai on one of the ships.
“He may have been weakened and injured, boarded the ship and disembarked here,” he said.
What about the cursive writing on the wings?
“I couldn’t read it,” he said. “It may have faded because it came from the sea.”
Opinions differ as to why the bird remained in captivity for months after Patil completed his investigation. The hospital and PETA say police did not respond and essentially forgot about the bird. Patil said the hospital had misread instructions to release the pigeons when they were healthy enough.
The pigeons “looked no different from our pigeons,” Dr Dangar said, and were doing well on a diet of local wheat, millet and rice. So he was released on Tuesday after police finally responded to inquiries from the hospital and PETA with a “no objection” letter.
Asked what she would say if her Taiwanese owner came to take the pigeon back, Patil said the pigeon has a new home in the Indian skies.
“This place is ours now,” Patil said.