Dourine Act, 1910

This is a very old colonial-era law (1910) aimed at stopping the spread of dourine, a contagious disease affecting horses (and, where extended, breeding donkeys), mainly transmitted during breeding. Section 3 lets the Provincial Government require registration of entire (stallion) horses kept for breeding, and section 4 lets it appoint inspectors and veterinary practitioners to enforce the law in specific areas.

Under section 5, an inspector can enter and search buildings or fields for horses suspected of being infected, order in writing that a suspected horse not be used for breeding pending veterinary examination, and direct that it be moved to a place for segregation. Section 7 and 8 then bring in a veterinary practitioner, who examines the horse and, if microscopic or other scientific tests confirm dourine, can order a male horse castrated or, with official sanction, a mare destroyed.

Sections 9 and 10 provide for compensation to the owner — the horse's pre-infection market value if it dies from castration or is destroyed, or half the value lost (in the case of a horse surviving castration) — with a veterinary practitioner able to award up to two hundred and fifty rupees directly, and anything above that referred to the Collector to decide. Owners can appeal a compensation decision to a special committee within two months (sections 11-12).

Section 13 punishes inspectors who search vexatiously with up to six months' imprisonment or a fine up to five hundred rupees, and section 15 fines anyone who uses an unregistered or dourine-affected horse for breeding (fifty rupees for a first offence, one hundred for repeat offences). Section 16 protects officials acting in good faith from being sued.

This Act is over a century old, has been amended at least once (in 1920), and all its rupee figures for compensation and fines are historical amounts that would need to be checked against any current official text or successor rules before being treated as accurate today.