In the wake of the horrifying incident where a stray dog mauled an infant to death in Old Delhi’s Nabi Karim area, North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) will seek to file review petition in Supreme Court (SC) for impounding ‘sick’ dogs. The SC had earlier banned any attempts to impound and kill stray dogs that cause nuisance.
Councillors from NDMC have unanimously agreed to move the apex court seeking impounding of dogs who are wounded or incurably ill. Mohan Bhardwaj, chairman of standing committee in NDMC said sterilisation is not a full proof solution to curb the stray dog menace.
‘We can only control the population of stray dogs through sterilisation. What if a stray dog is mortally wounded? The dog is bound to react and will vent his/her anger on human beings. Therefore, as a precautionary measure, we want to impound only those dogs who have developed an incurable infection or an injury’, said Bhardwaj.
The corporation has suggested that they would keep the impounded dogs in a dog house or a veterinary hospital for treatment. It has also asked the concerned department to come up with a full-proof plan to tackle the menace of stray dogs within a month. ‘This is high time we take action against stray dogs. There is no proper plan in place. Even the sterilisation process has not yielded any results. The officers wait for a tragedy to happen before taking any action’, argued Mukesh Goel, leader of opposition in NDMC.
The civic body is also planning to start a mass sterilization drive of stray dogs. It will soon invite fresh tenders from competent agencies. It has been observed that the earlier sterilisation drive has not yielded good results for the corporation.
Nearly 20,000 cases of dog bite are reported every year in municipality-run hospitals even as the three civic bodies claim to sterilize more than 30,000 dogs every year. The maximum cases of dog bite were reported in the NDMC areas, where 8,987 cases of rabies were reported during last year. On 27 June, a two-month-old baby died after she was mauled by a stray dog in her home here.
The baby — Sagun — was lying on a bed when a stray dog entered her room on the third floor of the house in central Delhi’s Nabi Karim area at about 9.30pm on Thursday and attacked her head, a police officer said.
Nabi Karim comes under the jurisdiction of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation that says there are about 1.5 lakh dogs in its area.