Court documents say Danial caused “unnecessary pain and suffering” to 43 cats by failing to offer them with adequate food and water and leaving them unattended at an apartment in Ang Mo Kio between August and November 2021.
NParks prosecutors Ron Goh and Farisha Asharaff told the court the case involved the biggest variety of abandoned pets up to now to be prosecuted under the animal cruelty section of the Animals and Birds Act.
TODAY understands that that is the primary prison sentence handed down in reference to a conviction under Art. 42 section 1 letter d) the Act regarding negligence on the a part of pet owners.
Farisha, who noted that 43 cats were kept in a small, confined space without adequate food and water, said: “This is a case that has set a precedent.”
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After a 34-year ban, Singapore legalizes pet cats for public housing residents
The prosecution argued that the punishment can be “far too lenient” and sought a jail sentence for Danial as a result of his “deliberate” behavior because he knew cats were breeding “uncontrolled” and yet mismanaged their living conditions cats .
In mitigation, Danial, who had no legal representation, told the court that he regretted his actions and was the only breadwinner of the family who would should return to work immediately after his dismissal.
District Judge Lorraine Ho agreed with the prosecution that the health risks brought on by neglected cats within the apartment could have spread to other people in the world and that Danial’s actions warranted a jail sentence.
On November 5, 2021, AVS, which is a cluster of NParks, was alerted by the police as a result of public comments regarding an unpleasant odor emanating from a residential premises.
The police who arrived on the scene observed that the most important gate and door to the apartment were closed, and investigators determined that the resident of the apartment had not returned home for a couple of month.
Authorities were unable to contact the owner of the apartment, and as a result of the strong stench and barking cats coming from the apartment, police hired a locksmith to achieve entry to the apartment and located over 30 cats and skeletal stays inside.
NParks officers managed to contact Danial that evening and arranged to examine his apartment three days later.
On November 8, around 11:00 a.m., NParks conducted a joint inspection with a Housing and Development Board (HDB) officer and Danial.
Danial admitted to owning 41 live cats, two dead cats and skeletal stays present in an empty apartment and handed them over to AVS.
Danial said he and his wife moved into his mother-in-law’s apartment around January 2016. He claimed that originally they only had three cats, and after his mother-in-law died, he took over the cats.
Because the cats weren’t sterilized, they began to breed uncontrollably until he “lost count” of the variety of cats in his home, prosecutors said.
A veterinarian who examined the 41 surviving cats found that all of them experienced “pain and suffering” because they didn’t have access to a repeatedly available source of fresh water.
Farisha said: “The only source of water was the tap dripping onto the toilet floor; “Dirty brown water was found to be accumulating on the toilet floor, possibly caused by fecal contamination.”
Drinking contaminated water facilitates the transmission of parasites and exposes cats to disease.
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During the inspection, no food for cats was available. Investigations revealed that Danial fed the cats a big bag of dry food once every week, which might have been “very stressful” for the cats, who would have needed to fight and compete for food at one feeding point.
During the examination, six cats were found to have superficial wounds and healed scars that were “most definitely” brought on by fighting with other cats, the prosecutor’s office said.
The prosecutor’s office added that the 2 deceased cats were found to be “extremely thin” and emaciated and likewise had liver lesions, indicating that that they had been in a “negative energy balance” for a while and had recently seen a discount in food consumption.
Of the remaining cats, nine had a flea infestation, one had adult lice on the fur, and 19 cats had alopecia, of which three had a ringworm. Alopecia in cats is a condition through which the cat’s body hair falls out as a result of an underlying condition.
The cats were living in “very poor conditions” in a “filthy and unhygienic” environment, with feces, decaying carcasses and skeletal stays of cats recorded throughout the apartment.
With closed windows within the apartment and poor ventilation, heavy environmental pollution led to the buildup of high concentrations of ammonia, posing a health hazard to each cats and other people nearby.
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A South Korean resident who had 1,000 dogs at home suspected of animal cruelty
In July 2021, Danial applied for and got a brand new HDB flat in Yishun and had six months to vacate the old one.
The family moved into Yishun’s apartment after receiving the keys in August of the identical yr, and Danial admitted that he had made no arrangements to rehome the cats, leaving them within the empty apartment.
“He also didn’t repeatedly visit the apartment in query or provide the cats with food and water every day as a result of long working hours and poor financial management, [being] in debt,” said prosecutor Farisha.
She added that Danial claimed he visited the cats once every week to feed them and last visited the apartment in early November 2021, just a few days before NParks contacted him.
He closed the gate and door and left the apartment lower than five minutes after spilling dried cat food on the ground, and further admitted that he didn’t check on the cats or clean the apartment, knowing that the apartment was unhygienic and crammed with cat feces.
For each count of causing unnecessary pain or suffering to an animal, he faced a jail term of as much as 18 months or a positive of as much as A$15,000 ($11,031) or each.
