Assam Plunges into Dark Ages as Assembly Passes Cruel Bill to Allow Buffalo Fighting, PETA India Condemns Move as ‘Archaic’
For Immediate Release:
27 November 2025
Contact:
Vikram Chandravanshi; [email protected]
Sanskriti Bansore; [email protected]
Guwahati—Today, in a move that plunges Assam into the Dark Ages, the Assam Legislative Assembly passed the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Assam Amendment) Bill, 2025, aimed at permitting buffalo fights (Moh-Juj). This decision undermines the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, (PCA Act, 1960) which prohibits forcing animals to fight; constitutional duties to protect animals under Articles 48A and 51A(g); and judgments of the Supreme Court of India, in Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja (2014) and Animal Welfare Board of India v. Union of India (2023).
Report and video footage of the investigated past buffalo fight events are available upon request.
“The passage of this cruel bill aimed at allowing vulnerable buffaloes to be beaten into charging at, wounding and bloodying each other plunges Assam into the Dark Ages,” says PETA India’s Senior Policy and Legal Advisor Vikram Chandravanshi. “Buffalo fights will stain Assam and deter tourists, many of whom visit Assam expecting animals to be protected in the national parks and elsewhere in the state.”
Following a petition by PETA India, the Gauhati High Court previously quashed the Assam government SOP dated 27 December 2023, which had allowed buffalo and bulbul bird fights during a certain time of the year (in January) upholding that they violate the PCA Act, 1960 and in the case of bulbuls, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
As prey animals, buffaloes are innately nervous, so men who use them for fighting deliberately instigate them to fight. An investigation into a buffalo fight held in Ahatguri in the Morigaon district of Assam on 16 January 2024 by PETA India revealed that during these fights, owners and handlers jabbed the buffaloes with sticks and whacked them with bare hands to agitate them. During the fights, the buffaloes sustained bloody wounds. The fights lasted until one of the two buffalo broke away and fled.
PETA India urges the Assam government to reverse this regressive move and uphold India’s true culture of ahimsa and compassion. PETA India – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA India’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
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