Animals’ whimpers echo in Jantar Mantar

The silence of caged beagles and monkeys in a Telangana laboratory found its echo on the streets of Delhi on Friday. At Jantar Mantar, cries and whimpers of animals were brought to life in a chilling demonstration staged by PETA India, as the organisation demanded immediate closure of Palamur Biosciences — a contract testing lab accused of widespread animal cruelty.

In a dramatic act that gripped passersby, PETA India Director Poorva Joshipura was chained to a chair, enacting the torment inflicted on animals behind closed doors. The demonstration, campaigners said, was a stark reminder of what a whistleblower had recently exposed — dogs, monkeys, pigs and cows confined in overcrowded cages, subjected to painful experiments without pain relief, and in some cases, killed without sedation.

Earlier this year, PETA India had released a whistleblower-led exposé, complete with internal videos, from the Palamur facility in Telangana’s Mahbubnagar district. The revelations prompted the Central Government to appoint a high-level inspection committee, which visited the laboratory in June.

The Committee for Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CCSEA), along with representatives from the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), Institutional Animal Ethics Committees (IAECs), veterinarians and industry experts, submitted a scathing report following their inspection.

According to the inspection committee’s findings, “Palamur Biosciences failed to produce any inventory of the animals it houses. The inspectors counted over 1,232 animals on the premises, a headcount revealing far more dogs than approved by the CCSEA.”

The report revealed that so-called “surplus” animals were stuffed into repurposed rooms without health screening or biosecurity protocols, while dogs, monkeys, pigs, cows and sheep were subjected to repeated painful experiments in violation of regulatory norms.

The inspectors noted shocking instances of cruelty. Dogs were reused in painful experiments within weeks of previous studies, with one permitted to suffer severe tremors before being killed. Minipigs were forced to stand on drainage floors that trapped their feet, while monkeys were confined to narrow metal platforms that made it hard for them to even sit or lie down comfortably. Cows were found underweight, standing in wet mud without protection from the elements. Sedatives were not used before killing dogs, raising questions of inhumane euthanasia procedures.

Animals were found in visibly poor condition — dogs underweight and suffering from untreated ailments like cherry eye, minipigs and cows in poor body condition and sheep hidden from inspectors until discovered. The report also recorded handlers roughly grabbing dogs by the scruff and slamming legs into cage bars, suggesting such manhandling was routine.

The committee flagged systemic negligence, pointing to the absence of medical records, inadequate veterinary care, lack of quarantine facilities and “superficial record-keeping” that failed to even track how often animals were reused in experiments. It further noted that primates at the facility were wild-caught and not screened for Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), a virus transmissible to humans.

The inspectors also found that 73 dogs marked as being under “rehabilitation” were in fact subjected to the same bleak conditions as those still used in breeding and experimentation. They were housed on hard perforated floors without bedding, enrichment, outdoor access or meaningful playtime.

Campaigners said the inspection leaves no room for delay. “This is a house of horrors where dogs are starved, monkeys cut open and cows left to waste away,” Joshipura told reporters. “The government must shut it down and rescue the 1,200-plus animals still languishing there.”