Top court to hear plea on Jun 1 against culling of stray dogs in Uttar Pradesh

The plea was mentioned for urgent hearing before a bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and MM Shantanagoudar which said it would hear the matter on June 1.

The petition has sought a direction to Uttar Pradesh government to ensure that no more killings of community dogs take place in the state as an after-effect of death of 13 children in the past seven months in the Sitapur district unless it was established that dogs were behind such attacks.

The plea said that subsequent investigations had pointed towards attacks on children by wild animals and not stray dogs.

It has alleged that there was "indiscriminate and inhuman killing" of stray dogs in Sitapur on the mere assumption that the deaths were being allegedly caused by dog attacks.

The plea claimed that "owing to lack of proper and timely efforts by the district administration to contain the number of attacks and the reason behind the same, the attack increased drastically which has as per the reports has led to death of 13 children".

The petition, filed by advocate Gargi Srivastava, has claimed that the magnitude of the problem grew this month when unconfirmed reports of attacks being carried out by stray dogs appeared in the media after statements by the district magistrate of Sitapur.

"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 started," the plea said.