I did not want to watch that viral video. In fact, I deliberately scrolled past the photos because, frankly, my heart could not bear it.

But I did. I had to. Because I needed to be able to counter anyone who might claim it happened “otherwise”.

A dog was sitting on the steps of a pond’s bank at the famous Bagerhat shrine. It was half-submerged but could not move despite trying. A crocodile dragged it under. Even as the video circulates, leading to outrage, explanations begin to pour in.

Officials say the dog entered the water on its own. Others say it was aggressive. It had bitten people. A guard claims he merely shook his leg in self-defence, and the dog fell.

The video shows a dog unable to move. There is a crowd gathered with phones, watching as it struggles and is dragged down. It had been there for a while before the crocodile reached it. Could no one intervene? Or did they simply not want to?

This is not an isolated incident. It is a deeply troubling pattern in Bangladesh where the animal itself becomes the problem. As if animals suffering should be accepted as normal. Their deaths are reframed, or explained away, until cruelty becomes accident.

But the video does not lie as easily as we do.

I watched it closely, not as a passive viewer, but as someone who has spent years rescuing animals -- lifting them off roads, holding bodies that no longer respond, learning to read injury. The dog had lost use of its hind legs. Something was wrong with the dog.

And yet, no one helped. Not the people standing there. Not the ones filming.

What followed was familiar. There was denial, and then there was justification. A probe committee has now been formed. It will conduct an autopsy to determine whether the animal was “mentally ill”, but not whether it had endured harm before being left at the pond bank.

These are reactive gestures and not, at all, indicative of a system that cares. It is rather one that responds only when forced to. Why did no one intervene? Why was there no urgency to save a life?

This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Because it is no longer about one incident, or one location, or one set of officials.

It is about us.

We have normalised animal suffering to the point where it barely registers as an emergency. A limping dog becomes background noise. A dying animal becomes compelling content.

And when that indifference is challenged, we retreat into narratives that absolve us. We try and say, “the dog was aggressive”, “the dog was diseased”, “the dog fell on its own”.

We say things to ensure responsibility settles nowhere. But whether we acknowledge it or not, responsibility lies in the failure to act, in the instinct to film rather than intervene. It also exists in our discomfort with calling cruelty by its name.

And thus, I demand a full autopsy of the body. This is not an overreaction. It is a necessary insistence on accountability in a system that rarely extends it to animals.

It must be established if the dog was injured before it ‘fell’ into the water. If it was not, we must still confront the fact that a suffering animal was left unaided in public view.

Either way, the conclusion is damning. We fail to act not because we do not know better, but because we choose not to.