On Sunday, 11 October, one of India’s largest and oldest pet markets was almost deserted. Reports from the ground put attendance at a fraction of normal — only pigeon sellers and ornamental fish traders turned up. The Calcutta High Court is being widely described as having shut Galiff Street down. It did not. What it actually did is more interesting, and considerably harder to resolve.
What happened on Sunday
Galiff Street in north Kolkata has hosted a Sunday pet market for decades. Birds, fish, puppies, kittens, plants and aquarium supplies spill across the pavements from before dawn. Traders’ counsel told the High Court that more than 600 traders operate there, many for years.
On Sunday, 11 October 2026, according to a report in The Times of India, roughly 95% of them did not show up. Only pigeons and ornamental fish were traded. Sellers of exotic and Indian birds, dogs and cats were absent.
That figure is a journalist’s estimate from the ground, not an official count. But the direction is not in dispute — Bengali daily Sangbad Pratidin reported Kolkata Police and Customs officials conducting surveillance at the market from early morning.
What the court actually ordered
This is where most of the coverage has gone slightly wrong.
The matter sits inside a suo motu public interest litigation — In Re: Smuggling and Illegal Trading of Endangered Species of Birds, WPA (P) 41 of 2022 — being heard by a Division Bench of Chief Justice Ravindra Vithalrao Ghuge and Justice Arijit Banerjee.
In late September, the Bench directed the Kolkata Police, the Customs Department and the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, West Bengal to take effective steps against unauthorised sale and trading of birds, pets, fish, plants and other animals at Galiff Street. Customs and forest personnel were to be deployed in plain clothes to identify illegal sales and smuggling.
Then, on 6 October, the Bench clarified the position. Animals cannot be sold anywhere in West Bengal without the requisite licence — but animal trade may be carried on at Galiff Street and elsewhere, provided it complies with the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 and other applicable regulations.
The court did not order the market closed. It ordered it to be lawful.
The Bench directed all parties to file reports by 14 October, which means the next development in this case is immediate.
The licence nobody can name
Here is the heart of the problem, and the reason traders stayed home rather than risk it.
In court, the traders’ counsel argued that the nature of their business did not require licences at all, and that no rare species were being sold. Counsel appearing for the state, Saikat Banerjee, told the Bench that none of the traders held a licence issued by the State Animal Welfare Board.
Those two statements are not quite opposites. They are two parties talking about different pieces of paper.
There are at least three distinct regulatory requirements that could apply to a stall at Galiff Street, and they come from three different authorities:
| Requirement | Issued by | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Trade licence | Kolkata Municipal Corporation | Permission to run a business at that location |
| Pet shop registration | State Animal Welfare Board, under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Pet Shop) Rules, 2018 | Housing, space, veterinary care, record-keeping, conditions of sale |
| Wildlife compliance | Forest Department, under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 | Which species may legally be traded at all |
A trader could hold a KMC trade licence and still be in breach of the Pet Shop Rules. A trader could satisfy both and still be committing a wildlife offence depending on the species in the cage.
Most reporting has named only the municipal licence. That is the least demanding of the three, and almost certainly not the one the state was referring to in court.
What the Pet Shop Rules actually require
The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Pet Shop) Rules, 2018, framed under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, require every pet shop operator to obtain a certificate of registration from the State Animal Welfare Board before trading in animals.
Registration is not a formality. The rules set conditions on enclosure sizes, ventilation, access to water, separation of species, veterinary support, maintenance of sale and health records, and restrictions including the sale of unweaned animals.
A companion set of rules — the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Dog Breeding and Marketing) Rules, 2017 — imposes a parallel registration requirement on anyone breeding or selling dogs.
Both have existed for years. Enforcement across most of India has been close to non-existent. Pet markets in several cities operate with no registration at all, and the question is simply never asked.
At Galiff Street, a court has now asked it. That is what changed on Sunday — not a ban, but the sudden arrival of a requirement that had always technically applied.
The wildlife question sitting underneath
The PIL was never about pet shop paperwork. It concerns smuggling and illegal trading of endangered birds, and Galiff Street was named within it.
Under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, native Indian birds cannot be traded. Parakeets, munias, mynas and similar species are protected, and keeping or selling them is an offence regardless of how long a market has existed. Legal bird trade is limited to non-native species, with further restrictions where CITES applies.
Allegations that the market has been used as cover for illegal wildlife sales were put to the court by counsel and by welfare organisations. Radhika Bose of the Kolkata-based CAPE Foundation has described the market as a front for illegal wildlife trade and pointed to puppy mills, indiscriminate breeding and the abandonment of unsold animals.
Two things should be said about that clearly. CAPE Foundation is a real and established organisation — it has worked with PETA India on Kolkata’s horse-carriage campaign — and its concerns deserve a hearing. But these are an organisation’s allegations, not findings of the court. The Bench has ordered investigation and enforcement. It has not ruled on what was being sold.
Dogs and cats: a different law, and a wider gap
Most coverage of this case has focused on birds, because the PIL is about bird smuggling. But puppies and kittens are sold at Galiff Street too, and they were among the traders absent on Sunday. For them the legal position is different — and in some ways weaker.
Dogs and cats are not wildlife. The Wild Life (Protection) Act does not apply to them. There is no protected-species question, no Forest Department jurisdiction, no customs angle. The only law governing their sale is the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and the rules framed under it.
That leaves two instruments doing all the work:
- The Pet Shop Rules, 2018, which cover the sale of dogs and cats and require State Animal Welfare Board registration
- The Dog Breeding and Marketing Rules, 2017, which require anyone breeding or selling dogs to register separately with the same board
Both are routinely ignored across India, and an open-air pavement market is close to the hardest environment in which to comply with either.
What the rules would actually require. The Pet Shop Rules prohibit the sale of unweaned animals, and set standards for enclosure size, ventilation, access to water, separation of species and veterinary support. They require sale records and health records to be maintained.
Consider what that means on a Sunday pavement. Puppies sold from open baskets have no documented age, no vaccination record and no traceable source. A crowded market with animals from many different sellers in close contact is an efficient transmission environment for parvovirus and distemper — diseases that kill young puppies and that a buyer discovers days after taking the animal home.
Where the puppies come from is the question nobody can answer. Radhika Bose of the CAPE Foundation has pointed to puppy mills and indiscriminate breeding behind the trade, and raised the fate of animals that remain unsold or stop being profitable. Those are allegations rather than established findings — but the registration requirement under the 2017 Rules exists precisely so that the question has an answer. Without it, a puppy’s origin is whatever the seller says it is.
For birds, enforcement has a clear hook: a protected species in a cage is an offence anyone can act on. For dogs and cats, there is no equivalent. A puppy on a pavement is not illegal to possess. What may be unlawful is the absence of registration, the conditions of sale, and the animal’s age — none of which is visible to a police officer walking past.
That is why the Pet Shop Rules matter more here than the headline wildlife case suggests. They are the only thing standing between a buyer and an entirely undocumented animal.
Two sets of people with something to lose
The welfare argument is straightforward and strong. Unregistered animal sale means no enclosure standards, no veterinary oversight, no records, no accountability for what happens to animals that do not sell. For birds in particular, the gap between a legal market and a trafficking channel can be very narrow.
The other side is also real. More than 600 traders — by their own counsel’s account — have run this market for years, in many cases as a sole livelihood. Several reportedly believed they were operating with state permission. Being told abruptly that you have been unlicensed all along, without being told which licence to obtain or where, does not produce compliance. It produces an empty street.
Neither outcome is what the court asked for. The order contemplated a lawful functioning market, not a shuttered one.
What to watch next
The 14 October reports. All parties were directed to file. What the state says about how many traders can realistically be registered, and in what timeframe, will shape everything that follows.
Whether a registration drive follows. The constructive path is for the State Animal Welfare Board and KMC to run an on-site registration process at the market itself, with clear guidance on which species may be sold. The destructive path is sustained enforcement with no route to compliance, which will not end the trade — it will relocate it somewhere unmonitored.
Whether other cities follow. Galiff Street is the most visible, but Delhi’s Jama Masjid market, Mumbai’s Crawford Market and similar markets in several cities operate under the same rules with the same gap in enforcement. A High Court precedent here will be cited elsewhere.
The real story
It is tempting to report this as a court cracking down on a cruel market, or alternatively as livelihoods destroyed by judicial overreach. Neither is accurate.
What happened is that a set of animal welfare rules that have been law since 2017 and 2018 were, for the first time in this market, treated as though they were enforceable. Hundreds of traders discovered simultaneously that they had no idea what compliance looked like.
That is a regulatory failure that predates the court order by nearly a decade. The rules exist. The registration mechanism exists. What has never existed is anyone telling a bird seller on a Kolkata pavement that either applied to him.
The market will come back. The question is whether it comes back licensed, or simply comes back.
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