An internal police inquiry has been initiated into the death of the five-year-old mare, Voice of Reason, a Mounted Police horse of Kolkata police that died on
Sunday night after the India-South Africa World Cup match at Eden Gardens.
According to sources, the horse galloped in panic after hearing firecrackers explode after the match and bumped into multiple vehicles on the road before crashing.
A senior IPS officer at the city police headquarters said a detailed inquiry report has been sought from the mounted police wing of Kolkata police about the death of “an on-duty mounted police member”.
Another officer said a sample of the viscera of Voice of Reason has been preserved and sent to a government laboratory in Belgachia for investigation.
“According to the preliminary post-mortem opinion the horse died of ‘internal injury and traumatic shock’, but it is still not clear whether it had other ailments. The horse did not collapse on the spot but walked back to the stable. A detailed report on the circumstances and the condition in which the horse returned to the stable is to be probed,” said the officer.
Voice of Reason, an officer of the mounted police said, was one of the healthiest horses in the stable.
The city police had received the horse as a gift from the race course around six months ago.
“This is not the first time that the mounted police have been deployed for Eden Gardens duty. However, such a thing had never happened earlier. This is subject to investigation why the horses that are trained for law and order and are habituated to loud noise, would feel scared or panic,” said an IPS officer.
Several other horses were injured on Sunday night as they started running helter-skelter following the sound of fireworks outside the Eden Gardens and crashed into vehicles.
One of them, Historian, received stitches for the injuries it suffered while the others received injections and saline.
The Cricket Association of Bengal that organised the fireworks display told this newspaper on Monday that they had the requisite permit from the state pollution control board and Kolkata police for the fireworks outside Eden Gardens on Sunday.
Kolkata police said on Tuesday that they had yet to receive any similar intimation about firecrackers from the CAB for the remaining two matches that are scheduled at the stadium during the cricket World Cup.
