GUNTUR: Dr Giri Kumar Patil, a Telugu doctor who was forced to leave his pet panthers in the war-struck Ukraine and shift to Poland in search of job, has appealed to the Government of India, and the State government to help him get a new passport as he reportedly lost his passport soon after reaching Poland’s capital city Warsaw.
In a telephonic conversation with TNIE, Dr Patil claimed that the Indian Embassy officials have been delaying the process of issuing a new passport for the past two months.“I’ve visited the embassy office here in Warsaw a dozen times till now. I have explained my situation and urged them to speed up the process, but the officials are not at all heading my pleas and not even giving me any details about the progress of the process,” he added.
Dr Patil said his topmost priority at the moment is to visit his pet cats at his home but he is stranded in Poland due to loss of passport.‘My feeling staying away from my cats is too intense. They are wild animals by nature but they too have an emotional connection. I worried how they are, being closed up in the enclosure for such a long time. I have been away from them for the past six months. My humble message is to immediately consider and rapidly act to fix my issue, keeping in view of the exact current situation of the cats “ said Dr Patil emotionally.
“The law is very strict here and I have been living on the refugee allowance given by the Poland government. I’ve been living in a motel room with no heaters and eating a single meal every day to survive. I’m sending the money sent by my family and borrowing some cash from others to feed my pets,” he added.
Dr Giri Kumar Patil, also known as Jaguar Kumar on youtube, has been raising the two wild pets for the past two years. He came to light when he chose to stay in Donbas when the Russian invasion started, as he didn’t want to leave his ‘panther kids’ alone there.
Dr Patil hails from Tanuku in West Godavari district and went to the eastern European nation in 2007 to study medicine. He settled in Ukraine after completing his MBBS degree and has been documenting his struggles of taking care of the two big cats and procuring food for them amid the war on his YouTube channel ‘Jaguar Kumar Telugu’, which has over 1 lakh subscribers.
When he was forced to leave for Poland in search of a job so that he could feed his pets, he constructed a safe enclave for his pets at his home. He sold all his properties and car to construct the enclosure and hired a neighbour to feed the animals.