A nine-year-old was attacked by a pack of dogs in a wooded area near Vibhutipura lake, Vigyan Nagar ward coming under Mahadevapura zone, on Saturday.
The victim, Nirmal, sustained injuries on his head, hands and thighs. He is undergoing treatment at Victoria Hospital.
According to Mallappa Bhajantri, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Assistant Director (Animal Husbandry), the condition of the boy was stable. “Various tests, including CT scan, were conducted. The reports are normal. The child may be discharged after a couple of days,” he said.
Nirmal’s parents are from Nepal. His father Surjan works as a security guard and mother Srijana is a daily wage labourer, he said.
“The boy was attacked when he wandered into the wooded area alone. Passers-by heard him scream for help. They shooed the dogs away and rescued him,” said Dr. Bhajantri.
He said the victim was first rushed to a private hospital where he was given first aid. He was then taken to the super-speciality hospital where immunoglobulin and anti-rabies vaccination were administered. The BBMP, he added, is bearing the entire cost of treatment.
On Sunday, the BBMP's Animal Husbandry Department had rounded up two dogs from the area. Stating that none of the dogs had rabies, he said the department was keeping a watch on the other dogs.
For the past several years now, the BBMP has been implementing the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme to control the stray dog population. The recent dog census estimated the stray dog population to be around 3.09 lakh.
Apart from revealing that only 1.68 lakh stray dogs were neutered, the census showed that the stray dog population was more in the five outer zones of Mahadevapura, Rajarajeshwarinagar, Dasarahalli, Bommanahalli, and Yelahanka. In these zones, the population of stray dogs is pegged at 1.97 lakh. In the densely populated core zones – East, West and South – the figure is around 1.09 lakh.
