Mumbai: An unidentified man poisoned around 20 dogs to death on Friday night in a plush Mira Road locality. As the CCTV footage of one of the buildings captured the man feeding dogs at night, the Navghar police station has filed an FIR based on the complaint lodged by one of the residents of the building.

Interestingly, the residents who ran their parallel investigation for 48 hours with the help of an animal welfare NGO, have tagged Shamlal Badal, a 60-year-old owner of a pig slaughterhouse as the suspect. A video has also been recorded of Badal allegedly confessing to having killed the dogs.

Shubhang G, a resident of Golden Nest, Phase 6 who is the complainant in the case, said that he came to know about the incident around 11.30 am on Sunday. He said that a friend of his informed him that a few dogs had collapsed near their building and were lying motionless with their tongues out. “When I reached the spot, I saw around six dogs who seemed to be in a seriously unwell. Their eyes were popping out and they collapsed one by one,” said Shubhang.

He immediately carried one of the dogs to a nearby pet clinic. Mr Shubhang claimed there was no doctor available at the clinic for 15 minutes and by the time the vet arrived, the dog had already died. After returning to the building, Mr Shubhang and other residents checked the footage of a CCTV camera fixed at their gate and found an unidentified man feeding the dogs out of a white gunny bag the previous night. The residents then headed to the Navghar police station to file an FIR against the man for allegedly killing the dogs.

The police officials then contacted Salim Charania, a local detective and president of NGO Pawa, to also look into the matter. After checking the site, Mr Charania found the gunny bag from which the man had fed the dogs and said that it carried a heavy smell of pesticides and meat. “We handed over the gunny bag to the police and started to inquire if anybody could have possibly seen the man feeding the dogs since the CCTV footage did not show his face clearly. After probing for 48 hours, we zeroed in on Badal, who runs a slaughterhouse near the Bhayander creek. Our sources informed us that the man lets his pigs wander around the creek and was irate with the dogs who often chased his pigs away. Badal has also killed dogs in past but was not arrested by the police even then,” claimed Mr Charania. He also said that another housing society, barely 100 metres away from the spot, also reported the death of seven dogs the same evening whom they buried since they were not aware of possible investigations of such cases. Mr Charania added that Badal’s appearance matches with that of the man on CCTV footage but since the face on the footage was not the clear, police was not taking any action against him. Therefore, in order to gather more evidence in the case, Mr Charania along with the residents accosted Badal who then confessed to the crime. “We have recorded a video of him admitting to poisoning the dogs. While he refuted the allegations in front of police, he later confessed to the crime in front of us and apologised for it,” said Mr Charania. He also added the video will be handed over to the police on Monday as there was no officer-in-charge available at the police station on Sunday.