Four stray dogs, suspected of mauling an elderly Dwarka resident to death, have been found to be sterilised, vaccinated, and in “normal condition”, said a senior Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) official on Saturday.
The official said the dogs were picked up and sent to an Animal Birth Control (ABC) centre in Najafgarh being run by Sonadi Charitable Trust after a complaint was received about a dog attack on January 8.
“We sent a dog-catching team later that afternoon and picked up two dogs near the park. On January 9, two more dogs were caught,” said the official, adding that all four showed “no signs of aggression” and were found to be exhibiting normal behaviour.
However, the official said they don’t plan to release the dogs immediately. “They will be kept under observation for at least 10 days. For now, they are not displaying aggressive behaviour and are, in fact, reported to be very friendly,” he said.
The incident in Dwarka’s Sector 19 involved Raju, a 60-year-old man, who was allegedly attacked by dogs and died from his injuries.
Police said Raju was intoxicated at the time and lying on a footpath. He had been living on the streets in Dwarka for over a year, and is survived by his wife and three children, the police added.
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The issue of stray dogs has been doing the rounds on social media since the Supreme Court directed local bodies to permanently shelter dogs that are rabies-infected or reported to be ferocious. It has also directed the authorities to remove stray dogs from educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands and depots, and railway stations, and relocated them “to a designated shelter”.
Animal rights activists and animal rights groups as well as animal lovers have been protesting against the Supreme Court decision, saying the government does not have any infrastructure to house the dogs. Indies, they say, have been domesticated over thousands of years and now acclimitised to co-existing with the humans on the streets.
According to ABC rules, sterilised and vaccinated stray dogs are to be returned to the same area.
The MCD currently does not have its own dog shelter, although it maintains that a shelter has been in the works in Dwarka Sector 29 since November. While the civic body oversees 20 ABC centres run by NGOs, it refuses to bear the costs of dogs kept there, saying trusts have “enough infrastructure to keep the dogs on a temporary or permanent basis”.
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