Tuesday, 28 October 2014 12:32 PM
Lucknow: If Vishnu and Lakshmi pull through this
crisis, it would be because some men had proposed — and determined —
that they should live.
For those who believe man is the master of this
universe, Vishnu and Lakshmi are no gods but a lion and lioness taken
ill at a breeding centre in Uttar Pradesh. Nobody, not even veterinary
experts, can tell what the two are suffering from.
Both
have symptoms of paralysis, but it’s not only their distressed roar that
is ringing in chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s ears. It’s the barbed
words of another man that has hit him hard too.
The
Asiatic lions — under treatment for over a month now — are of the same
breed as six lions that the Gujarat government, then headed by Narendra
Modi, had gifted to Uttar Pradesh in 2012.
Earlier this
year, Modi had taken a dig at Akhilesh for caging the lions when they
should have been roaming at a safari park coming up in the Samajwadi
leader’s home district Etawah. The park is not ready yet, so the two
lions had been kept in Kanpur zoo for over a year before being moved to
the breeding centre with the six others, where they fell ill.
The
state government has now sought help from London’s Zoo Society and the
Born Free Foundation, UK, named after the 1966 film Born Free, where a
lioness, Elsa, is reintroduced to the wild.
Sources said
Modi’s comments had made Akhilesh wild too. “Your chief minister asked
for lions from me,” Modi had told a rally in Bareilly ahead of the
summer national elections. “We gave his government lions. We had hoped
his officials would demonstrate some boldness in running the government
after seeing the lions. But they could not handle the Gujarat lions. The
lions had to be caged.”
That wasn’t all. India’s future
Prime Minister then went on to invite Akhilesh’s father, Samajwadi chief
Mulayam Singh Yadav, to visit Gir “to see how lions roam freely”.
That
was in April, when the two lions — brought from Hyderabad Zoo, which
had got them from Gir forest in Gujarat — were still in the Kanpur zoo.
Akhilesh had hit back, saying the comment was uncalled for as the lions
had been gifted as a “political courtesy”.
Then, in September, the lions fell ill.
Official
sources said the challenge for the state government now was not only to
save the two but also its image. They said Akhilesh, who last week
visited the safari park — being built on the lines of Britain’s Longleat
Safari and Adventure Park — instructed wildlife officials to take help
from international experts.
“We have interacted with
experts from the Born Free Foundation and sent the medical reports of
the lions. We are in touch with the Zoo Society too. It is a big
challenge to save the two and we have gone all out,” Rupak De, chief
wildlife warden, Uttar Pradesh, told The Telegraph today.
“The
two cannot move, their appetite is decreasing. What they are actually
suffering from is not known. The symptoms are that of paralysis and
viral infection. We have consulted all the leading vets in the country,
including those from the Indian Veterinary Research Institute in
Bareilly. As a last resort, we have approached the Born Free
Foundation.”
Etawah Lion Safari director K.K. Singh said the two, “now inmates of a captivity centre at Etawah, have been segregated”.
Some veterinary experts said inbreeding within fragmented lion populations could be to blame for the illness.
- The Telegraph, Calcutta
