‘Take a Vow Against Cruelty’: PETA India’s Billboard Campaign Calls for Horse-Free Weddings

For Immediate Release:

4 December 2024

Contact:

Hiraj Laljani ; [email protected]

Tushar Kol; [email protected]

Gwalior—Ahead of the ongoing wedding season, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has erected billboards in Gwalior, and other cities Jodhpur, Shimla, and Varanasi. The billboards alert the public to the cruel practice of using painful spiked bits to control horses at weddings and urge couples to forgo using suffering animals on their special day. A copy of the billboard ad is available upon request.

The billboard in Gwalior is located at Hazira main market, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh.

“Spiked bits are torture devices that can injure and traumatise horses for life,” says PETA India Advocacy Associate Tushar Kol. “PETA India is asking couples to have a heart for horses and leave them out of their wedding day plans.”

Rule 8 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Draught and Pack Animals Rules, 1965, prohibits the use of spiked bits – yet PETA India’s inspections across various locations, including Amritsar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Mohali, and Panchkula, have found over 800 of these torture devices embedded deep in animals’ mouths, ripping their lips and tongues and causing extreme pain, bloody wounds, immense psychological trauma, and lifelong damage.

As public awareness of the cruelty of spiked bits grows, numerous wedding parties are now opting for horse-free baraat options, from simply walking to the event to arriving in fancy cars and even dropping in by helicopter. Celebrity couples whose weddings were horse-free include Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Rukmini Sahay, Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput, Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja, Varun Dhawan and Natasha Dalal, and Zaheer Khan and Sagarika Ghatge.

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, please visit PETAIndia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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