News Maker

At 25 all six of them boast of a good figure, glowing skin and a great ability to attract hundreds of pairs of eyes as they sashay down the ramp.

But Basanti, Lily, Tina, Gauri, Ganga and Sita have hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Instead of winning applause for their `act’ the six lionesses with the Great Golden Circus — five of them blind and one pregnant — have become the centre of the ping-pong battle between circus owner Mohan Shahaney and Satnam Ahuja of Ahimsa. In the process the six `ladies’ have kept the Mumbai police, a High Court judge, two metropolitan magistrates, a sessions judge, a battery of advocates, two vets and a host of journalists on their toes as they follow the legal intricacies of the case that first came to light on October 29 this year. After a series of accusations and counter-accusations, the courts have now entrusted the lionesses’ responsibility to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park at Borivli, which has already spent a whopping Rs 50,000 on them. So where does that leave the other parties associated with the legal ding-dong? Ahimsa’s Ahuja with a smug smirk and circus owner Mohan Shahaney crying desolately, `But they are like my daughter!’

At the same time, as a lawyer who visited the circus recently pointed out, spare a thought for the poor lions, “They miss their mates so much that they are falling sick,” claimed the legal eagle.