Mumbai Police told The Washington Post that after conducting a “thorough and appropriate investigation and investigation” they did not find “any suspicious material or facts” related to the pigeon. He was discharged last week and is in good health, the hospital said.
Animal rights nonprofit PETA helped free the bird. “Like all birds, pigeons should be free to fly, forage, and raise their young together,” PETA India Director Poorva Joshipura said in a statement. Pigeons demonstrate self-awareness and intelligence. he pointed out.
Experts say the bird probably got lost during a race off the coast of Taiwan and may have traveled roughly aboard a boat. A 3,000 mile journey.
“Racing pigeons can fly up to 1,000 kilometers” [about 620 miles] It lasts for one day, but we had to stop before flying to India,” said Yang Tsung-te, head of Taiwan’s racing pigeon trading platform Nice Pigeon. Several racing pigeons from the island He added that he had come this far. Just like America and Canada.
The spying allegations follow US concerns last year about Chinese spy balloons and come amid continued tensions between China and India, which have a disputed border and vie for influence in the region. Japan is one of the two nuclear-armed states.
This is also not the first time that Indian authorities have wrongfully imprisoned a pigeon on suspicion of being a spy. In 2015, a similar incident caused laughter in India and Pakistan. In 2020, police briefly detained a Pakistani fisherman’s pigeon after it flew over Pakistan’s heavily militarized border.
This claim may sound ridiculous, but In the age of satellites and cyberespionage, pigeons have a history of being used for reconnaissance.
During World War I, Germany deployed pigeons with cameras attached to their chests, and in World War II, Allied forces used the birds to exchange secret messages, the report said. National Audubon Society, an American nonprofit organization dedicated to bird conservation. Because pigeons are a “common species,” birds equipped with cameras can hide their intelligence gathering “among the activities of thousands of other birds,” according to the CIA, which also developed the cameras. That’s what it means.
According to the International Spy Museum in Washington, pigeons are “characterized by their speed and ability to return home in any weather.”
These same qualities make pigeons suitable for racing. Recently, its use has become much more common. During races, pigeons are sometimes released hundreds of miles from home, and their owners wait for them to return.
Colin Jeromack, a professor at New York University and author of The Global Pigeon, believes that Indian authorities have a strong desire to He said it was “extremely ridiculous” to assume that he had committed espionage based on the Chinese text. They have many more “sophisticated” tools than pigeons.
Once called “poor man’s horse racing,” it is now big business, he said, noting that winning pigeons can fetch tens of thousands of dollars or more at auction. .
According to Ya-Ching Huang, a Boston University researcher who studies Taiwan’s pigeon racing culture, Taiwan’s competitions involve pigeons being sent out to sea rather than races on land, with races ranging from 124 miles to 310 miles. Released offshore. Because of this format, “it’s not uncommon for the pigeons to end up in neighboring countries or be transported further afield on boats,” she says.
While pigeon fanciers say the pigeons take great care during training, animal rights groups and ethicists have long criticized the sport. According to PETA, millions of pigeons die each year in Taiwan’s seasonal races, many drowning from exhaustion, dying in storms, or being killed too late.
“Pigeons are used as tools for human ends” in racing and espionage, says Jan Dekkers, a research fellow in animal ethics at Newcastle University in the UK. “No pigeon would choose to travel far from the loft to bring back messages, tags, rings, etc.”
Vic Chiang contributed to this report.