Pigeon tied up as a possible Chinese spy is released after eight months

Suspicion of foreign espionage, cursive messages in ancient Chinese, a sensitive microchip – and a suspect who could not be stopped at the border.

Ravindra Patil, the assistant sub-inspector of Mumbai Police assigned to the case, scratched his head for answers. But first he had to find a place where he could lock up the unusual prisoner.

So he turned to an animal hospital in the Indian metropolis, asking him to retrieve a list of “highly confidential and necessary” information about the suspect – a black pigeon caught lurking in a port where international ships dock.

“The police never came to check the pigeon,” says Dr. Mayur Dangar, the hospital manager.

After eight months, the bird was finally released this week. His innocence of spying for China had long been confirmed by excellent detective work, but the prison doors only opened after a newspaper articlerepeated letters to the police by the animal hospital and intervention by an animal rights organization.

The group, PETA India, celebrated what it called the end of a “wrongful imprisonment.”

“PETA India handles 1,000 animal emergency calls every week, but this was our first case of a suspected spy needing to be released,” said Meet Ashar, who heads the organization's anti-cruelty department.

Mr Ashar said the case had left hospital staff in a dilemma: they did not want to expose a healthy bird to the sick and injured, but they also could not release it because “it was such a high-profile bird”. case and the charge was so serious.”

This is not the first time that India has feared feathered infiltration, but the latest case was a sign of changing times and threats.

In 2014, authorities in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, at the center of tense relations between India and Pakistan, arrested a pigeon near the border on similar charges.

The bird in Mumbai suggested new twists – it had appeared in a city nowhere near a disputed border, and the Chinese writing on its wings pointed to a more sophisticated and powerful rival that India has struggled with in recent years.

Mr Patil, the 39-year-old sub-inspector, had already handled two animal cases in his 12-year career: the deaths of two dogs, one in a suspected poisoning requiring an autopsy, and the other on a road. accident. Neither case had geopolitical consequences.

This time, however, “I had to ask for advice from our intelligence colleagues,” he said in a telephone interview.

The bird was spotted by guards from the Central Industrial Security Force, which watches over government facilities such as ports. Not the first to cast a critical eye on a pigeon, the duty officer spotted it hanging out alone – “it was just sitting there, and it all looked suspicious – chip and ring on the legs,” Mr Patil said. The guards alerted the police.

Once Mr. Patil found a place to confine the bird, the slow investigation began. And he started collecting clues.

The rings on the bird's legs, including one with a chip, were sent to the forensic laboratory.

“The chip contained details about the location coding – what it is and where it came from,” he said.

“Nothing else appeared suspicious,” he added.

He checked the details with information online and concluded that the pigeon was a racing pigeon from Taiwan. When he spoke to guards at the port, which mainly receives oil ships bringing crude oil for refining, he learned that Taiwanese vessels were among those docked there. He concluded that the bird had probably reached Mumbai on one of the ships.

“It may have been weak and injured and it may have boarded the ship and disembarked here,” he said.

As for the cursive Chinese writing on the wings?

“It wasn't legible,” he said. “Because it came by sea, it may have faded.”

Why the bird remained in jail for several months after Mr Patil completed his investigation is a matter of dispute. The hospital and PETA say police did not respond and the bird was essentially forgotten. Mr Patil said the hospital had misread the instructions that the pigeon could be released once it was in good health.

The pigeon “looked no different from our pigeons,” said Dr. Dangar, and had done well on a local diet of wheat, millet and rice. So after police finally responded to questions from the hospital and PETA with a “no objection” letter, it was released Tuesday.

Asked what he would say if the pigeon's Taiwanese owners came to claim it, Mr Patil said the bird had a new home in the Indian skies.

“Now it's ours, right here,” Mr. Patil said.