Animal sacrifice: Activists hold candlelight vigil

To draw people's attention to the issue of animal sacrifice in religious places, scores of activists today took out a candlelight vigil in the national capital "mourning the death of thousands of animals" sacrificed at the Gadhimai festival in Nepal.
Activists of the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO), PETA-India and many other organisations held a silent candlelight vigil at Jantar Mantar, where Swami Agnivesh, a renowned social activist, fasted for 24 hours to protest the killings of animals.
At the two-day Gadhimai festival in Nepal last month, as many as 4,000 animals -- calves, goats and birds -- were sacrificed.

Prior to the festival, pleas were submitted to the Nepal government requesting it to ban the animal sacrifice. The Supreme Court of India too had directed the border states to enforce prohibition on trans-boundary movement of animals. Despite these, the sacrifice in Nepal went ahead, FIAPO said.
FIAPO director Arpan Sharma has also written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking stringent actions to stop smuggling of animals across Indian borders.