Animal cruelty legislation in India: A green criminological exploration

Abstract

We see laws being constantly updated responding to the onslaught of changing times and circumstances and value settings of society. However, such dynamism in the legal spectrum appears to be lopsided once laws on animal cruelty are glanced over. Laws on animal cruelty seem to be following a pattern that is not so dynamic and abreast of the evolving moral compass of society. It is critically observed in the course of this research that much like the legislation preventing animal cruelty, cruelty against animals, ironically, exhibits an upward graph. In pursuit of resolving this irony, especially in the context of India, the aim of this paper is to explore the concept of ‘animal cruelty’ within the Indian animal protection legislation to identify substantive and conceptual gaps while situating the statutes within the theoretical perspective of green criminology. The paper explores and critiques the concept of ‘animal cruelty’ within the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960. The research exercise reveals that the laws display a strong hue of anthropocentric instrumentalism denigrating animals as commodities in service to humans. The statutes under study allow for a wide array of abuse towards animals, permitting those harms as necessary suffering. The grandest of the lacunae is the absence of provisions for protecting animals from sexual and psychological violence. This green criminological exposé is supplemented, in conclusion, by valuable insights and remedies sourced from the green criminological theory itself in the form of a radical deconstruction and rethinking of how animals are treated in legal practice and ways to expand our notion to a non-specialist understanding of crimes, victims and justice.