Bombay HC Orders FIRs Against Pigeon Feeders
By Manu Shrivastava
It was just another monsoon-soaked morning in Mumbai. The city, drenched and dramatic as ever, stirred beneath a thick canopy of grey.
In the heart of Dadar, near the famed Kabutarkhana, commuters wound their way across feather-strewn footpaths, noses buried under handkerchiefs, eyes squinting at the chaos above and below.
 |
| The pigeons at the Gateway of India in Mumbai |
Amid the drizzle and defiance, the pigeons gathered — not by instinct alone, but drawn, quite deliberately, by the hand that feeds.
That hand, however, now finds itself squarely at the receiving end of the law.
This wasn’t a story of birds anymore. It had grown feathers of its own, flying right into the courtroom of the Bombay High Court where Justices G.S. Kulkarni and Arif S. Doctor sat in judicial contemplation of what was, unmistakably, a ticking civic time bomb.
The court, no stranger to the tug-of-war between sentiment and safety, didn’t merely acknowledge the issue — it swooped down upon it.
The feeding of pigeons, once dismissed as a harmless indulgence — a touch of compassion in a concrete city — now stood condemned as a full-blown public health hazard. The court’s concern wasn’t abstract. It was clinical, backed by science and scarred lungs.
Expert affidavits from KEM Hospital’s Dr. Amita Athavale and earlier findings by Dr. Sujeet Rajan laid bare a grim diagnosis: hypersensitivity pneumonitis, irreversible lung fibrosis, breathlessness that ends only with ventilators or death.
Pigeon droppings were not a nuisance. They were a disease vector. The image of a frail Mumbaikar gasping for breath in his chawl room while pigeons fluttered freely outside wasn’t melodrama — it was data.
And yet, outside the court’s hallowed walls, amid the rusting iron fences and fading tiles of the Dadar Kabutarkhana, the feeding continued. Illicit, insistent, and emboldened.
 |
| Click here for the Print Version |
It was about those who, despite repeated warnings, chose to endanger others — residents, children, the elderly — under the guise of tradition.
When a society’s devotion turns into disregard for health, the law must step in, and step in it did. The court permitted FIRs under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita — not in theory, but with photographic proof, video evidence, and an urgent tone.
The message was unambiguous: public health is paramount. Even heritage — that oft-invoked shield of sentiment — would have to wait. The 1933 water fountain at Dadar, once a public utility and now a pigeon buffet, was acknowledged, even respected. But not at the cost of lungs.
There was a hint of sorrow, perhaps, in the court’s words — a recognition of what Mumbai loses each time it has to choose between tradition and tenability.
The fountains, the railings, the quiet rituals of throwing rain — all part of the city's peculiar charm — were now contaminated by the stench of feathers, droppings, and defiance. The court didn’t want to take a hammer to heritage. It simply refused to let nostalgia smother a city already choking.
And so, in the fine balance between compassion and consequence, the law leaned — as it often must — towards life. Not merely existence, but dignity, breath, and the right to walk a street without the fear of falling ill.
The pigeons will fly, as they always have. But for those who insist on calling them down with fistfuls of seed and an unyielding belief in sentiment over science — the law now waits.
In a city used to shrugging off problems until they become crises, the Bombay High Court’s judgement feels like a rare breath of clarity — one that doesn't need to be filtered through a handkerchief.
To receive regular updates and notifications, follow The Draft News:
