The other day, while walking through Delhi's Khan market, I saw a man wearing a sandwich board that said, “KILL ABANDONED DOGS”. He was arguing with a passerby. I went up to them to see what was happening. The man with provocative ideas about stray dogs was persuading the passerby of his cause. "They are abandoned," he said, "They don't get food, so they bite us. They are a nuisance."

He handed me a survey form. “KILL ABANDONED DOGS. DO YOU SUPPORT?” it asked. There were two boxes: Yes and No. It asked for my name and number. I ticked No, wrote my name and number. He started arguing with me. The other man and I both said that a lot of human beings on the street were a greater nuisance than stray dogs.


His organisation was called KAD, Kill Abandoned Dogs. “They'd be better used being someone's food,” the activist said. I was in a hurry and asked him if he had a pamphlet or a website to explain his cause. There's everything, he replied, but would give me nothing. Reluctantly he gave me his number. His name, he said, was Abhi.

That was clearly a nickname. Why wasn't he giving me his real name, I wondered. What was he trying to hide?

I put his number on an app on my mobile phone called TrueCaller, which allows you to search for the name registered to any number. "Abhinav Srihan Police," the name turned up.

Police?!

I then put his number on Google search and found that it was on a number of pages, along with many other numbers, acting as a helpline for Fauna Police. He calls himself a Fauna Police Officer.

Fauna Police?!


I found his Facebook profile page. His profile photo:


I found photos of him with a monkey:


And a calf:


And a bear:


And an eagle:


I wondered if he had anything against dogs. Ah, there he was, enjoying the company of a dog:


Clearly, his KAD survey in Khan Market must have been to provoke people to bring dog-haters out into the open. I wondered what he planned to do with the phone numbers.

His blog had a number of articles about rescuing various animals from injury or torture. More interesting was his YouTube channel, which is called Expert Pixel, the name of his graphic design firm. Here, he puts up his video recordings of various acts of animal activism he has done, some of which is hidden-camera stuff.

He has also appeared on TV news shows. The videos show him rescuing cats from sewage lines, eagles wounded by kite-flying, and a dog facing torture from its owner, a woman police constable.

He feels particularly strongly about saving cows, as does the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. Yet Srihan's big idea to save cows is unlikely to be acceptable to the RSS. He is of the view that as long as we drink cow milk, cows will suffer, which is why he shuns dairy products. He is vegan.

He even commissioned a music video to save cows:


I called him up asking him for an appointment. I said I wanted to know more about KAD. He asked me to call him up a day later. The next day he said he'd be happy to meet me but what he was doing in Khan Market was a "social experiment" and I should first watch the video – that it was already up on YouTube. In other words, someone was recording him going around Khan Market, weeding out dog haters from dog lovers, their words recorded through an unobtrusive microphone on him.



I felt so relieved I hadn't been caught on hidden camera saying something politically incorrect.