Congress activists here welcomed Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC)chief N. Raghuveera Reddy to a party meeting by tying live pigeons to Diwali rockets and setting it alight. The rockets went up and the pigeons fell dead, roasted in the intense heat of the cracker burst high above.
Mr. Raghuveera Reddy was here along with former minister Kondru Murali, Rajya Sabha MP K.V. P. Ramachandra Rao, West Godavari district Congress president Rafiulla Baig and Mahila Congress president S. Padmasri to attend a party meeting. Local party workers decided to welcome their leader in a novel way and they came up with the idea of firing rockets that would release white pigeons up in the sky. The pigeons were stuffed into paper cones and sealed tight so they wouldn’t flutter loose. The idea was to see the cracker burst high in the sky and the pigeons fly free. But the intense produced by the cracker burst killed the birds and they fell to the ground.
Taking strong exception to the use of birds, members of the NGO People For Animals and the general secretary of the Asian Wildlife Foundation Prabhu Popireddy demanded that a case be booked against the Congress workers.
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