Brown Roofed Turtle Rescued from Illegal Captivity at Hotel Following PETA India Complaint

For Immediate Release:

06 December 2024

Contact:

Meet Ashar; [email protected]

Hiraj Laljani; [email protected]

Gonda – After a video surfaced showing a Brown Roofed Turtle, a species protected under Schedule II of the Wild Life (Protection) Act (WPA), 1972, unlawfully confined in a small tank, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India collaborated with the Gonda Forest Division to register a preliminary offence report (POR). The turtle has since been rescued and safely released at Parvati Arga Bird Sanctuary in Gonda.

The turtle was confined at Bedi’s Dream Land Hotel & Resort on National Highway 27, near Saryu National Highway Bridge, Gonda – 271 319. The POR was registered on 25 November against the hotel manager and others under sections 9 and 51 of the WPA, 1972. The offence is punishable with a jail term of up to three years or a fine of up to Rs. 1,00,000 or both.

The before and after videos are available upon request.

“We commend Shri Pankaj Kumar Shukla, IFS, Divisional Forest Officer, Gonda, for promptly rescuing the turtle and registering the POR and sending a clear message that cruelty to animals will not be tolerated,” says Virendra Singh, Cruelty Response Coordinator at PETA India. “This incident is exactly why laws exist to keep wild animals where they belong – in nature.”

Brown Roofed Turtles are classified as “Near Threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. Because turtles are wild animals, when kept in homes, they typically are fed an unnatural or inappropriate diet and relegated to dingy tanks without any enrichment.

PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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