Death of a pet cat under wheels of a high-speed train has led to the guilty verdict of ‘negligence’ against the French national rail operator, SNCF by a Paris court yesterday (Tuesday).
The incident happened in January this year at the Montparnasse train station after a Paris-Bordeaux train ran over a cat that had escaped from a passenger’s bag.
Shortly before departure time, the cat ‘Neko’ escaped from travel bag of its owners, Georgia and her 15-year-old daughter Melaina and got underneath the high-speed stationary train with 800 passengers on board.
Distraught owners spent 20 minutes trying to persuade staff at the busy train station to rescue Neko, which means “cat” in Japanese.
Georgia accused rail staff of cruelty after they refused to delay the departure of the train for reasons of safety to staff.
Once the train had departed, owners found their pet cat ‘sliced in half’.
“We saw him sliced in half,” Melaina told animal rights association, 30 Million Friends.
“They (rail staff) told us it wasn’t their problem, that it was just a cat and that we should have had it on a leash.”
SNCF offered her a free ticket to Bordeaux in compensation.
Incident of cat’s death on train track sparked an outcry from pet lovers and outraged animal rights groups at that time. Even French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin was reportedly “shocked”.
An online petition received over 100,000 signatures, and an animal rights charity filed a legal case against the national railways, SNCF for “serious abuse and cruelty leading to the death of an animal”.
That charge allows for a fine of up to €75,000 (NZ $1,31,000+) and a five-year jail sentence, but in yesterday’s verdict, the court fined SNCF €1,000 for “negligence” ruling the pet’s killing had been caused “involuntarily”.
The verdict went against the recommendation of prosecutors and SNCF was also directed to pay another €1,000 in damages to each of the pet’s two owners.
The court concluded that there had been “an absence of commitment of the necessary resources to rescue the cat”.
SNCF said that it “regrets this sad incident,” but claimed the cat was not visible under the train and staff could not be sure whether it was still on the tracks. Only once the train moved, reality was discovered.
The train operator also pointed to the dangers of staff going down onto the live train tracks, which are electrified.
Following Neko’s death, French Interior Minister announced that police officers in 4,000 stations across the country would be trained to respond to animal trafficking and abuse.
