Mumbai: It was last May that Mayur Dangar, a veterinarian at Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals in Parel was contacted about a possible spy pigeon idling at Pir Pau pier, a dock at Mumbai Port Trust which chiefly handles oil vessels. The black-grey pigeon, which was first spotted by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), had rings on each of its feet and what appeared to be Chinese markings on its feathers.
Immediately suspicious, the CISF took it to the RCF police station in Chembur, which sent the bird to the city’s biggest veterinary hospital Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals in Parel.
Thus began what was the most confounding cases he had ever handled, Dangar told ThePrint.
“It was a one-of-its-kind case for me,” Dangar, the hospital’s manager, told ThePrint. The police left the bird there and never came back to check, he said. “Meanwhile we were concerned that the bird might get infected with other viruses the longer it stays.”
On 29 January, following repeated reminders from hospital authorities, the jailbird was finally set free. This was over two months after authorities found out that what they thought was a Chinese spy was, in fact, a Taiwanese racing pigeon that found its way to India, police said. By the time it was released, it had been held captive for eight months.
When contacted, Ravindra Patil, an assistant police inspector at the RCF police station in Mumbai’s Chembur, who was heading the investigation, said there was some “miscommunication”.
“We had asked the doctors to release the bird if it was healthy and in a condition to fly. The investigation went on for 3-4 months and then later with workload, this took a bit of a backseat,” he told ThePrint.
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Suspected spy pigeon
Until this pigeon case came to him, Ravindra Patil had dealt with only two cases involving animals, both involving dogs. After the bird was taken to the hospital, the rings on its feet were removed and sent to to Forensic Sciences Laboratory (FSL). According to Patil, one of the rings had a microchip, which investigators then traced back to Taiwan.
“The chip had details of the location and number for the race,” Patil said.
Investigators were also trying to get an expert to decipher the script on its feathers, but since the bird had flown overseas, the writing had faded. “Nothing more was there on the chip and we even cross-verified the information. That is how we concluded that there was nothing suspicious,” he added. Investigators also found that Taiwanese ships frequently dock at the port. “This is probably how the pigeon ended up in Mumbai,” Patil said.
Authorities at the hospital, meanwhile, were getting worried. Although the investigation had officially been closed, they received no word from the police.
“We began fearing that the bird might contract some disease at the aviary,” Dangar said.
“Plus, since we started as a prevention of cruelty organisation, our objective was to set it free as soon as possible. But the case was sensitive, so we couldn’t have released it.”
In January, Mumbai Police finally got back to them saying the investigation had been closed, the veterinarian said.
Three days before it was finally set free, the bird was allowed to fly around the hospital’s aviary. “We thought that staying captive for so many months would affect its flying capacity but it was flying properly in the room. And now it has taken to the Indian skies,” Dangar said.
This wasn’t the first time that a pigeon was taken into custody for suspected espionage. In 2016, another bird was reportedly taken into custody at Pathankot in Punjab after authorities found a note threatening Prime Minister Narendra Modi attached to it.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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