Alakh Pandey.
Days after the walls of her under-construction animal shelter were pulled down, animal welfare activist Jagriti Mishra has received a Rs 10 lakh contribution from Physics Wallah founder Alakh Pandey to help rebuild it. The gift, reported on Monday, comes as an inquiry into the demolition gets under way.
Mishra works with Street Worldz Trust, which treats and shelters injured and abandoned strays. She was building an animal shelter and a free veterinary hospital on agricultural land in Delhi when, on Friday, the boundary walls of the structure were brought down.
By her account, she learnt of it from her labourers, who told her that some people had entered the land with a JCB machine. Mishra alleges that the demolition took place without any prior notice and has left her with considerable financial loss. She has also alleged that it followed her refusal to pay money to a person who approached her about the property. Those claims are hers, and no official finding on them has been made public.
Action on the ground followed within days. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi suspended junior engineer Vikas Kumar Gupta on Monday with immediate effect in connection with the demolition. An inquiry into the engineer's conduct has been ordered, the police have been directed to register a case against those responsible, and the District Magistrate has been asked to help Mishra set up the shelter again. The civic body has not publicly set out the full grounds for its action, and the findings of the inquiry are awaited.
It is against this backdrop that Pandey's contribution arrives. The Rs 10 lakh is intended to help Mishra rebuild the facility and get the work moving again at a stage when funds matter most.
A Familiar Name Steps In
Pandey is among the country's best-known education entrepreneurs. A native of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, he started a YouTube channel in 2016 to teach physics to students preparing for JEE, NEET and board exams, and later added chemistry. The channel passed two million followers by 2019. In 2020 he and Prateek Maheshwari set up Physics Wallah as a company. Headquartered in Noida, it listed on the stock exchanges in November 2025 after a Rs 3,480 crore public offering, and Pandey remains its largest shareholder.
He has been quick to respond to causes that reach him online. Media reports have noted that he previously extended Rs 10 lakh in help to Jitu Munda, an Odisha man whose story spread widely on social media. His support for Mishra's shelter follows the same approach: a direct contribution, aimed at a specific need.
What the Shelter Is Meant to Do
The facility Mishra is building is meant to do two things. The shelter would give injured and abandoned animals a protected place to recover. The veterinary hospital, which she plans to run free of charge, would let treatment happen on the same site. Together they would give feeders and rescuers in the area somewhere to bring animals that otherwise would have gone untreated.
Mishra has a large following on social media, where she documents her rescue work. Many of her followers first learnt of the demolition from her own account of it. The response online has been closely watched by animal lovers who want to see the shelter come back.
Questions That Remain
Several points are still open. The inquiry has yet to report. The police case has only just been started. The allegation about the demand for money remains an allegation until it is examined. And a timeline for the reconstruction has not been announced.
What is not in doubt is the need. A shelter that has lost its walls cannot do its work, and the animals that would have used it are still on the streets. Pandey's donation does not answer the legal questions, but it addresses the practical one: how the building gets back on its feet.
For Mishra, the support offers a way forward at a difficult moment. For the animals she looks after, it may mean the shelter opens sooner than it otherwise would have.
