In a case of cruelty to animals, the owner and two employees of a dog training centre in Bhopal brutally killed a trainee dog by hanging it with its chain from the training centre’s main gate.

The police have arrested the three accused, including a woman, after the dog’s owner lodged a police complaint in the matter.

According to the police, the accused were arrested after the cyber cell recovered footage of the chilling incident from the centre’s CCTV camera. The accused had deleted the CCTV recording after killing the canine but a team of the cyber police succeeded in retrieving it.

The accused include the owner of the ‘Alpha Dog Training Centre’, Ravi Kushwaha and his employees Tarun Das and Neha Tiwari alias Priya.

Police officials said the dog’s owner, Nilesh Jaiswal from Kalapipal, had sent his pet dog, ‘Sultan’, to the training and boarding centre located in the Sahara Colony in the Misrod area of Bhopal.

According to the information, the dog was of the Pakistani Bully Kutta breed.

The training centre owner told Jaiswal that the training would last for four months, till then the dog would live in the centre’s boarding. After the four months, Jaiswal called Ravi Kushwaha to inquire when he could come to take his dog back. Ravi, initially, kept dillydallying on returning the dog with an excuse that the training was not complete. Later, he told Jaiswal that the dog had died due to some illness.

When Jaiswal reached Bhopal to take the dog’s body, he suspected some foul play and subsequently approached the police and lodged a formal complaint on 12 October.

According to Misrod ACP Rajneesh Kashyap, the Misrod Police, during an investigation, checked the CCTV footage and found out that the CCTV video of the day of the incident had been deleted.

A police officer said consequently, the police confiscated the hard drive and with the help of the police cyber cell retrieved the CCTV footage of the day of the incident on October 9. The footage revealed that the dog had been brutally killed.

The main accused, Ravi Kushwaha, Neha Tiwari and Tarun Das, were seen in the video hanging the dog at the entry gate of the training centre by pulling it with the chain around its neck from the other side.

In the footage, the dog could be seen writhing and struggling for almost 7 to 10 minutes before dying a painful death.

The police arrested the three and registered a case against them under sections 201, 429 and 120 B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty To Animals Act.