Dove rockets land Congress in soup

Eluru: Congress activists at Kovvuru town on Saturday in their over-enthusiasm to accord welcome to APCC president N Raghuveera Reddy committed an inhuman act by attaching doves to firecracker and launching the rockets into sky.

Poor birds lost their lives in blaze of the rockets. Following all-round uproar, police registered a case. The inhumane ‘experiment’ to send doves into the sky loaded in to a special cone attached to the rocket took place in front of the APCC president, who failed to warn them against such an act.

Raghuveera Reddy reached Kovvuru in the morning along with former Minister Kanumuri Bapiraju, District Congress Committee president Rafiullah Baig and others. It is a normal practice here to burst crackers and fire rockets on important occasions.

But this time it was a case of overzealousness where the party workers brought white doves, tied a paper flag of the Congress party to their neck and loaded them into a special cardboard cone attached to the rockets, closed it with another cone and fired them.

As people watched the rockets zoom into the sky, the doves came down fluttering their wings and drop dead on the ground with heavy bleeding. The bizarre incident was witnessed by the people who gathered leaving them aghast with shock. What was more pathetic was none of the leaders cared to stop the act.

Noticing that this could create trouble, the PCC president and important leaders quietly left the place. Initially, the police too did not care to register any case saying that they had not received any complaint. But as the news went viral and protests from people started the police registered cases under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.