The Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the West Bengal government to change the names of the lion named ‘Akbar’ and the lioness named ‘Sita,’ both housed in the same enclosure at Bengal Safari Park.
“Will you yourself name your own pet after some Hindu God or Muslim Prophet?” said a single-judge bench, led by Justice Saugata Bhattacharya, as reported by Bar and Bench.
“Mr Counsel, will you yourself name your own pet after some Hindu God or Muslim Prophet … I think, if any one of us would have been the authority, none of us would have named them as Akbar and Sita. Can anyone of us think of naming an animal after Rabindranath Tagore? Sita is worshipped by a larger section of this country … I also oppose naming the lion after Akbar. He was an efficient, successful and secular Mughal Emperor,” Bhattacharya remarked.
The single-judge recommended the state government to consider assigning alternative names to the two lions, adding, “We aren’t talking about the names of the pet animals of an officer of the zoo department. But you are a welfare and a secular State why should you draw a controversy by naming a lion after Sita and Akbar.”
The court was hearing a petition filed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) Bengal wing, opposing the forest department’s decision to house the two big cats together in the same enclosure and demanding a change in the name of the lioness ‘Sita’.
The VHP, in its plea, stated that this decision was a ‘direct assault’ on the religious beliefs of all Hindus and could be considered blasphemy.
The West Bengal government, however, informed the court on Thursday that the naming of the two large felines as ‘Sita and Akbar’ was carried out by the Tripura Zoo authorities in 2016 and 2018, before the lions were recently transferred to the Bengal Safari Park in Siliguri.
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