SPCA "strays" from aim

While the long queue of pet owners in front of Dr M B Mantri’s clinic, located within BSPCA’s Parel complex, makes one wonder how he finds time to sterilise stray dogs, there is another problem also. The BVC students are now complaining that they don’t get to handle enough cases as these are transferred to Mantri’s clinic immediately after preliminary examinations. A third-year veterinary science student revealed that he still could not administer intra-venous fluids for lack of practical experience. "BSPCA officials rarely allow us to handle cases. Most of these are transferred to Dr Mantri’s clinic. They often tell us that we are irresponsible and thus cannot be entrusted with serious cases." An agreement between the BSPCA and the BVC stipulates that while the hospital will be run with the honorary services of the staff of the Bombay Veterinary College (BVC), the college students will get free practical training at the hospital.

The hospital’s love for the retired professor and its obvious lack of confidence in the BVC surgeons has often created problems for pet owners also. A retired commodore who had left his bitch Rani in the surgical ward of the hospital on November 4 last year for treatment of maggot wounds returned a day later to find his bitch missing. The dog was traced to Dr Mantri’s clinic, which is, for records’ sake at least, referred to as the Animal Birth Control ward five days later. BSPCA manager Khambatta, however, said the bitch was transferred to the ABC ward at the request of the commodore’s wife, who apparently had failed to communicate the matter to her husband.

P M Puntambekar, Associate Dean at the BVC, when contacted pleaded ignorance about the transfer of cases, though as per the arrangement between the BSPCA and the BVC, the BVC principal heads the hospital. Puntambekar also refuses to believe that students are suffering. His argument is that a third-year student not knowing how to administer IV "must be an isolated case. How else do you think so many of them pass out every year and set up their own practices or take up veterinarian jobs."

BSPCA manager Supriya Khambatta, however, confirmed that cases were being transferred to Dr Mantri’s clinic for want of experts at the hospital. She went to the extent of calling the college surgeons "useless" and alleged that they were never present in the hospital, not even in their duty hours. "We will not allow an animal to die just because a doctor has taken leave…we have to save its life and we do it by transferring the case to Dr Mantri," she said, adding that Dr Mantri "knew his job."