: A public interest litigation petition has been filed in the Madras High Court Bench here seeking a direction to the State Government to pay compensation to seven students of a Government Girls Higher Secondary School at Alanganallur near here as they were reportedly bitten by five stray dogs which entered the campus during the prayer meeting on January 23, owing to the absence of compound wall on all four sides.
A Division Bench of Justices Chitra Venkataraman and R. Karuppiah on Wednesday directed Special Government Pleader T.S. Mohammed Mohideen to file a report with regard to the alleged incident and adjourned the case to March 6. C. Anandhraj, Executive Director of Equal Right, a non-governmental organisation based here, had filed the PIL petition through his counsel R. Alagumani who also insisted on a direction to the government to construct the compound wall forthwith.
According to the petitioner, the school with a strength of 1,240 students did not have a compound wall for long. Only a portion of the wall in the entrance was constructed about two years ago from the Local Area Development Fund of a Member of the Legislative Assembly. Absence of the wall on all other sides led to the entry of stray dogs into the campus which was also used by the locals as a public passage even during school hours.
Submitting pictures of stray dogs roaming around freely on the school campus, the petitioner said that the seven students who fell prey to such dogs on January 23 included four girls.
