Kolkata Woman’s Stray Animal Rescue Faces Neighbors’ Opposition | Kolkata News – Times of India

KOLKATA: An animal lover, Arundhati Roy, faced resistance from her neighbours while she was relocating around 65 Indian breed dogs and 18 cats — majority of which were ailing — from her Dashadrone shelter in Rajarhat to a two-storey building at Rakshit More near Boral.
Roy had taken this building, located in a residential area, on rent to provide better housing facilities to her animals. She claimed to have already spent a whopping Rs 81,000 for paying the security deposit, advance rent and brokerage for the property. But her efforts went in vain as locals objected to her plans of housing the animals in the building and compelled the property’s owner to not rent out the place to Roy.
Amid intense opposition, Roy wasn’t allowed to unload about 26 of her dogs, which arrived at the place around 4am on Monday, from two light goods vehicles.
“One ailing dog died on Monday evening. Several other dogs, which were forced to remain unattended for over 24 hours in the vehicles with no food and water due to the locals’ opposition, are still in bad shape,” said Dola Sarkar, an animal rights activist, who had rushed to stand by Roy after learning about her ordeal along with a fellow activist, Subarno Goswami. Before taking up the place on rent, Roy had apparently vowed to make the building soundproof. Roy claimed that she had even started work in this regard.
On Sunday, around 7pm Roy had managed to shift 33 Indian breed dogs to the new home in Boral. But when two other vehicles arrived on Monday with more animals, the neighbours apparently opposed her vehemently.
“We (neighbours) were unable to sleep throughout the night due to the incessant barking of the dogs,” said Shyamal Das, a neighbour. “We will not allow such nuisances. No more dogs will be allowed here,” said Bapi Chakraborty, another neighbour.
Property owner Rakhi Ghosh alleged that she was unaware that Roy would accommodate so many animals in her house. Forced by the neighbours, Ghosh agreed to return Rs 40,000 security deposit amount to Roy and refused to rent her house to the animal lover.
“Sudden shifting of the shelter and overnight travel from Rajarhat to the other part of the city made the dogs restless and left them exhausted. They were in a state of panic and thus barked so much,” said Goswami, who also sought assistance from Narendrapur police station.
Ward 34 councillor Biswajit Dey of Rajpur-Sonarpur Municipality assured that he would try to find a possible alternative to house the animals. “Locals gave me 24 hours ultimatum to shift the remaining 26 dogs, which had been shifted to the Boral home earlier,” rued Roy, who had sent some of the animals to a temporary accommodation in Kamalgazi.