A group of dog lovers approached the Supreme Court on Friday challenging the Uttar Pradesh administration’s order to cull dogs in Sitapur district citing reports that contradicted the official version blaming stray canines behind the death of 13 children in the past several months.
Blaming wild animals and not stray dogs behind the brutal attacks, an application by a lawyer Gargi Srivastava and others sought an immediate stay on culling of dogs till the cause behind the deaths is unearthed. A Vacation Bench of Justices lN Rao and M Mohan Shanatanagouder issued notice on the application and sought response of the UP Government on June 8, when the matter will be heard next.
Senior advocate Anand Grover who represented the dog lover petitioners said that the death of children were unfortunate but equally unfortunate was the killing of dogs. He referred to previous orders by the apex court which restrict private individuals and State administrations from culling canines when alternate methods exist to control them.
Moreover, Grover pointed out to reports showing that the affected children were bitten by wild animals like hyena. Although District Magistrate order attributed deaths to dog bites, the senior counsel argued that the appearance of hyenas, fox, wild dogs, is such that they cannot be distinguished from stray dogs.
Moreover, no post-mortem was conducted to ascertain the involvement of stray dogs in these incidents.
In this scenario, he claimed that holding stray dogs responsible was not correct. “Following such newspaper reports, indiscriminate and brutal killing of community dogs by hanging them alive, burying them alive, hitting them with ‘lathis’ (wooden stick), leaving them to bleed to death in a pile of garbage and shooting them point blank has led to over 150 community dogs being brutally killed over a span of few days by not only the local people but also under orders of the village panchayats, police officials as well as the officers from district administration,” Grover said.