Why call lions Akbar, Sita? Court questions choice of big cat names

Kolkata: The curious case of a lion named Akbar, a lioness called Sita, and petitioners upset at such nomenclature for reasons related to faith took an interesting turn on Thursday with Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya of the Calcutta high court’s Jalpaiguri circuit bench saying his conscience doesn’t support such naming even as the state government told him that zoo authorities were anyway planning to rename the big cats that were acquired from Tripura. Why should you draw controversy by naming a lion and a lioness Akbar and Sita?” the judge asked. The state’s additional advocate general Joyjit Choudhury, however, informed the court that the animals were named by the Sepahijala Zoological Park in Tripura from where they were brought through an animal exchange program. The seven-year-old Asiatic lion and five-year-old Asiatic lioness were brought to the park from Tripura as a part of an animal exchange program along with other animals including two spectacled langurs, two leopard cats and four black bucks.