A mother-son duo was booked for allegedly killing a dog by hanging it from a tree in Maharashtra’s Pune district, police have said.

The alleged crime was committed in the Pirangut area of Mulshi tehsil and a case was registered against Prabhavati Jagtap and her son Omkar Jagtap, an official said on Thursday.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray had raised the incident on social media, while Padmini Stump, an animal activist who runs Mission Possible Foundation that operates a shelter home for dogs, approached the Pune rural police with a complaint against the mother and son.

“On October 22, Prabhavati allegedly assaulted their pet Labrador with a stick. Later, her son Omkar hanged the canine from a tree. We have booked them under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act,” Paud Road police station senior inspector Santosh Girigosavi said.

Before killing the canine, the family had called up one dog lover from Pimpri and asked her to come and take the dog away, the official said.

“But later, they sent a picture of the dog hanging from a tree. We rushed there and got an offence registered against them,” Stump told PTI.

The family had taken the dog to a vet and asked him to conduct some tests, including rabies, she said. “Presuming that the pet had rabies, they might have killed it,” she said.

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