8 teens burnt 3 pups alive: What's wrong with you, India?

I could not sleep last night. The horror of an extremely disturbing video that became public yesterday, of eight boys burning three pups alive, kept haunting me.

The terrified little ones, just a few weeks old, squealing and shrieking in pain and fear, and the boys, sadistically, putting them right into the bonfire-pyre they had lit for them.

Why would a group of eight boys, all between 10-15 years, want to subject cute-looking pups to this cruelty?

At an age when you would expect them to cuddle them, make them playfully dance to their command, teach them tricks, earn a loyal friend for life.

What then has gone so terribly wrong with the internal wiring that youngsters turn into monsters and inflict unthinkable cruelty on another life? The audio in that video gives more clues to the psyche of the boys.

In a matter-of-fact tone, one boy is heard instructing another to push the pup that is trying to escape, right back into the fire. Not one in that group of eight murmured any protest against the act.

The world has seen one video - that of the boys burning the pups. Prior to that is another video that I chose not to put in the public domain.

Because I felt sick in the stomach watching it. That showed the boys carrying the hapless pups, holding them by their tail, to that part of Wazir graveyard in Musheerabad area of Hyderabad, where they they would be set ablaze. A clinical, cold-blooded, planned murder, executed in broad daylight.

Even worse, all of this action was captured on video for posterity and life on social media. There was obviously no sense of fear of being caught, not an iota of reluctance or wanting to hide.

They were proud of their "daring" act and wanted to to show it off to the world. Is there a serious warning sign that there is something hopelessly wrong with our behaviour patterns?

Just three weeks back, India was horrified by a MBBS student in Chennai flinging a six-month-old dog from the terrace of the building, even while the act was captured on camera by a fellow student.

The medico's machismo in his world view getting a certificate from the hapless squeals of the dog, when it landed on its back on the ground, suffering fractures.

The problem is that the law lacks the bite when dealing with cases like this. The maximum fine for a first recorded offence is only Rs 50 and in the case of these minors, they will either go to a home as "juveniles in conflict with justice" or simply walk away free.

Also read - Do you know how little Chennai man will pay for throwing dog off terrace?

When the Animal Welfare Board of India urged the former Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar to get the 1960 Act amended to increase fine and imprisonment, he replied that there is no need to increase fines as "India is a very compassionate country".

I hope Javadekar, who is no longer in charge of the ministry, would have got a reality check on compassionate India, hearing the shrieks of the pups in that video.

America has dealt with something similar. In 2010, President Obama brought in the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act that banned animal crush videos which were depictions of small animals being crushed to death by humans for sexual fetish purposes.

The videos depicted people, with their faces unseen, stomping animals like rabbits to death with spiked-heel shoes or with their bare feet.

Another real concern is that these youth could exhibit a violent pathology as adults. Hal Herzog, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University says that while some anthrozoologists believe that there is conclusive evidence to suggest that childhood animal cruelty is a good predictor of violence against humans when they grow up, others point out that most serial killers do not have documented history of animal abuse.

The fact that the boys in the video belong to the Muslim community as evident from the skull cap on one of the boys gave the story an entirely different spin, with many on social media using the opportunity to indulge in minority-bashing. They forgot the medico in Chennai was not a Muslim and it is not a "one monster, one religion" format.

The BJP functionaries went on a tangent, asking why not the same outrage for cruelty against cows. Someone ought to ask them, if the cow is a holy cow, what crime did the Jallikattu bull commit that the party is happy to subject it to cruelty in the name of tradition.

Police officers investigating the case say the boys - most of them school dropouts - are growing up in an area where they are used to watching goats being slaughtered for meat and may have been desensitised.

They have called in the parents of the eight boys also for counselling. The parents, the cops say, too were taken aback and shocked at the cruelty exhibited by their children.

It is obvious that the boys are not in "normal" childhood. Because childhood is meant to be a time for learning and play, where you must learn love and kindness not by being taught but by seeing how the world around you operates.

These children don't go to a school that teach right and wrong, making learning a joy.

Their "playground", on days when they find some leisure from work in a garage or in a fish market, is a graveyard where they play cricket and perhaps amuse themselves with such adventurous, horrific acts.

Can society in which the boys live absolve itself from all blame for the behaviour they exhibited?

A senior officer points out that it is not possible to "punish" the youngsters. So they are hoping to "reform" them by putting them through psychiatric evaluation and counselling.

I was reminded of Nissim Ezekiel's poem "Beauty", where the poet finds a bird beautiful, but that changes after he finds it preying and feasting on a lizard. But then that is the law of nature, where a "kill" happens to survive and live.

Not when it is carried out for sadistic pleasure.