Cops from the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate are appealing to residents to not burn noisy firecrackers during Diwali, pointing out that the sound inflicts torture on animals and birds.
Many animals and birds remain traumatised for several days after Diwali.
Cops from police stations in Salt Lake, New Town, Lake Town, Baguiati, Kestopur and parts of Rajarhat and Dum Dum are conducting campaigns using loudhailers against firecrackers that produce loud sound.
A senior officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said animals and birds have a better sense of hearing than humans and noisy firecrackers are painful for their ears.
“Animals and birds have better auditory receptors and have a sharper hearing than us humans. Bursting firecrackers that emit loud noise is painful for their ears and many remain traumatised for several days after Kali Puja and Diwali. Be it house pets or stray dogs, cows or birds, the effect of sound is the same on them,” Gaurav Sharma, commissioner of the Bidhannagar police, told Metro on Friday.
The cops will organise a walk with pets to create awareness among revellers about the ill-effects of loud firecrackers on pets as well as stray animals. According to Sharma, the walk will start from the Kolkata Gate in New Town on Saturday.
The cops have also conducted multiple awareness workshops in schools to make children aware about the bad effects of firecrackers.
“We have been conducting awareness workshops at various levels and Saturday’s walk is aimed at creating awareness about animals around us,” said Shreya Sarkar, assistant commissioner of police, New Town, who has planned the walk.
The police have also issued a set of Kali Puja and Diwali guidelines to all clubs, residents’ welfare associations as well as individual houses and cooperative societies.
According to the guidelines, only green firecrackers that produce up to 125 decibel of sound at 4m from the origin can be lit between 8pm and 10pm on Diwali.
The green firecrackers can be identified by scanning the QR code printed on the packet
The guidelines also state that main gates of housing complexes cannot be locked during Kali Puja and Diwali. Police teams must be granted access to any tower inside any housing complex while responding to noise complaints.
The police have also started mapping out areas from where most complaints had been recorded in previous years.
The list includes Lake Town, the airport area, Baguiati and pockets of Rajarhat. Special patrol teams will be deployed in these areas.