At around 8pm on Friday, 9 October, a Pomeranian named Danny landed on a tin roof in Ravivar Peth, Pune. He had been thrown, police allege, from the fourth floor of the building where he lived. His spine is broken. His legs are fractured. He is alive, in intensive care at a specialist veterinary hospital. The part of this story that should trouble people most is not the fall. It is that, according to the complaint, the neighbourhood had watched the beatings for a long time before anyone picked up a phone.
What police say happened
Khadak police have registered a case against Ganesh Laxman Pardeshi, 52, an autorickshaw driver and a resident of Rajdhani Plaza in Ravivar Peth.
According to police, the incident occurred at around 8pm on 9 October 2026 at the residential building where Pardeshi lives. Witnesses have alleged that he beat the dog while drunk, and then threw him from the fourth floor. Danny struck the tin roof of a lower floor.
At around 8.45pm the same evening, a local resident named Yash Shejwal arrived at the rescue centre of Mission Possible Foundation carrying the badly injured dog. The rescue team gave first aid and asked how the animal had been hurt. Shejwal said the dog belonged to his neighbour, and that the neighbour had thrown him from the fourth floor.
Danny was then taken to hospital. Doctors found fractures in one leg and in the spinal vertebrae. He remains under intensive care.
The complaint was filed by Padmini Peter Stump, 68, founder of Mission Possible Foundation, a Pune organisation working in animal shelter and care. Khadak police have booked Pardeshi under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The investigation has been assigned to Police Sub-Inspector Dhone.
No conviction has taken place. These are allegations recorded in an FIR, and they remain to be tested.
The detail everyone is skipping
Most coverage of this case has led with the fall, because the fall is the shocking image. The complaint contains something more disturbing.
It alleges that Pardeshi drank frequently, and that after drinking he beat the dog — with his hands, with a belt, and by banging him against walls. Residents of the area are quoted as the source of those allegations.
Read that again. Not an incident. A pattern, described by the people living around it.
The complaint also states that several people witnessed him throw the dog from the building.
So the sequence runs like this. Neighbours knew. Neighbours saw. And the first formal complaint came only after a dog was thrown four floors onto a metal roof and had to be carried to a rescue centre with a broken spine.
This is the part worth examining, because it is the part that repeats. Nearly every serious animal cruelty case reported in India arrives at the police station the same way — after the animal is dead or close to it. The warning period, which almost always exists, passes without a complaint.
Why nobody calls
It is easy to blame neighbours for looking away. The more useful question is what the law offered them if they had acted earlier.
Until recently, not much.
The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 is the primary animal protection law in India. Under Section 11, cruelty to an animal — beating, kicking, torturing, causing unnecessary pain or suffering — carries, for a first offence, a fine of between ₹10 and ₹50.
That is not a typographical error. The figure has not been revised since 1960. For a repeat offence within three years, the maximum rises to a fine of ₹100, or imprisonment up to three months, or both.
A neighbour who called the police over a man beating his dog with a belt would, in practice, have been initiating a process whose likely end point was a fine smaller than the cost of the call. Draft amendments to raise these penalties have been under discussion for years without being enacted.
That is the honest explanation for the silence. Not indifference alone — a widespread and largely accurate belief that nothing would happen.
What has changed
The case against Pardeshi has been registered under both the PCA Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and the second one matters considerably more.
BNS Section 325 covers mischief by killing, poisoning, maiming or rendering useless any animal. It carries imprisonment of up to five years, or a fine, or both.
The improvement is not only the sentence. Under the old Indian Penal Code, the equivalent provisions carried value thresholds — the animal had to be worth a minimum amount for the harsher sections to apply, which created an absurd situation where legal protection depended on an animal’s market price. BNS Section 325 removed that threshold. It applies to any animal.
Whether that produces different outcomes depends entirely on whether police register cases under it and prosecutors pursue them. In this case, they have registered it. That is a start.
| Provision | Maximum penalty |
|---|---|
| PCA Act 1960, Section 11 — first offence | Fine of ₹10 to ₹50 |
| PCA Act 1960, Section 11 — repeat within 3 years | ₹100 fine, or 3 months imprisonment, or both |
| BNS Section 325 — killing or maiming an animal | Up to 5 years imprisonment, or fine, or both |
What a neighbour can actually do
Because the practical question matters more than the outrage, here is what is available to someone who sees an animal being abused.
Call the police and insist on an FIR. Animal cruelty is a cognisable matter under the BNS provisions. A station that declines can be escalated to the senior inspector or the DCP.
Contact a local animal welfare organisation at the same time. In this case, Mission Possible Foundation’s involvement is what converted a neighbourhood’s knowledge into a formal complaint. Organisations know which sections to cite, can arrange emergency veterinary care, and can follow a case through a system that individuals usually give up on.
Document. Dates, times, what was seen and heard. Video where it is safe to record. The complaint in this case drew on what residents had observed over a period — that observation is what gave it substance.
Do not wait for it to get worse. The repeated lesson of these cases is that the escalation was visible before it became fatal.
Where this stands
Danny is in intensive care with a fractured spine and fractured legs. Veterinarians are monitoring him closely. Local residents and animal welfare groups in Pune have called for strict action.
Pardeshi has been booked. He has not been tried, and the allegations against him remain allegations.
What is already established, regardless of the outcome of this case, is the shape of what happened: a small dog living in a flat where, by the account of the people around him, he was being hurt regularly — and a system in which that was not worth reporting until it nearly killed him.
The fall from the fourth floor is what made this a news story. The months before it are the actual story.
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