The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on June 1 a plea against alleged rampant culling of stray dogs in Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh following deaths of several children in the area over the past few months.
The plea was mentioned for urgent hearing before a Bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and M.M. 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.
‘Wild animals to blame’
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 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 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.
“This rampant massacre 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,” it claimed.
“The applicant herein is conscious of the plight of the families of the victims but the approach of the government and the administration in brushing aside this issue and leading to culling of dogs is nothing but a failed attempt to cover up their inactions,” the plea said.
