Source: Yahoo! News
Wire Service: AFP
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060902/wl_sthasia_afp/indiareligionenvironmentvultures_060902053913
On September 2, 2006 Agence France-Presse reported, "An Indian woman has ignited a furious row over the centuries-old tradition of using vultures to dispose of the dead by sending gruesome pictures of rotting corpses to hundreds of homes... The issue erupted after scenes from inside the Towers of Silence were revealed by Dhun Baria, 65, who printed leaflets with grainy pictures of bodies and distributed them to 2,000 Parsi homes in Mumbai... The Towers of Silence are off limits to all save pall bearers and the vultures who once circled overhead in large numbers before they dramatically died off... [The vulture population's] decline is blamed on the widespread use of now-banned painkiller Diclofenac for cattle that proves fatal to vultures feeding on carcasses. The drug was banned in May this year but was too late for vultures in Mumbai with none left in the city. The decline has led to continuing debate over how India's Parsi community should dispose of bodies."