Who Let The Dogs Out?

29th March, 2020

Dog bites man’ is not supposed to be news. But in , a barbaric  is playing out in the streets of .  reports.

ON A chilly winter evening on 20 January, a carefree Mudasir Ahmad Wangnoo, 12, was returning home from tuition classes in Baagwanpora, downtown , when he suddenly came face-to-face with two dozen stray dogs. What happened next on the banks of the partially frozen Dal lake was like a scene out of Animal Planet.
“I saw the canines tossing him up and down, tearing him apart like a pack of hyenas,” recalls eyewitness Syed Sajad Hussain. “Two dogs shredded his jacket 10 feet away. While the aggressive ones attacked his legs and torso, the weaker lot licked the blood splattered in the snow.”

So vicious was the attack that a horrified Hussain expected to see a dead body when he and his son managed to scare away the dogs. Luckily, there was still some life left in the bloodied body lying on the lakeside.

A shell-shocked Wangnoo was rushed to the Sher-i- Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), where doctors counted 125 dog bites on his body. Besides deep injuries to his neck, windpipe, and face, the doctors found that the canines’ teeth had punctured the boy’s heart, leading to pneumopericardium, a critical condition in which the air enters the heart.
“Doctors from four departments are treating him. We can’t say he is stable. It will take at least six months for him to recover. If he survives, he will have to undergo counselling,” says one of the doctors attending on the young victim.
The attack is the latest in a series of incidents in which a human has been left horribly injured or killed by out-of-control mixed-breed canines. The dogs have been rampaging through the streets of  ever since their culling was stopped in 2008, following criticism by animal rights activists led by Maneka Gandhi.
TEHELKA couldn’t reach Delhi-based People For Animals chairperson Maneka for her comments. Even a faxed questionnaire as demanded by one staffer remained unanswered till the time of going to press.
Biting Trouble
53,925 People were bitten by dogs in  in the past four years
91,110 Dogs roam the streets of , according to the latest census
Rs 800 Is the cost of sterilising each dog, borne by the government and AWBI
While Wangnoo is still battling for life, there are others who have died within days of being attacked by strays. Sehrab Wagay, 4, was bitten by canines on 23 July 2011. He was shifted to the SMHS Hospital in  on 9 August. He died the same day.
Ravaged by decades of armed conflict,  has also been a silent witness to a battle of dog vs man, mostly in the urban areas of the Valley. “We are concerned about the dog menace. But when we try to do something, we are stopped by animal rights activists. They are always creating hurdles,” then  Mayor Salman Sagar had said in 2007 after receiving Maneka’s letter asking the administration to sterilise dogs instead of poisoning them.
“It’s scary. The danger is real and serious,” warns Jammu &  Health Department chief Dr Saleem-ur-Rehman. In its latest survey, the department has found that 53,925 people were bitten by dogs between January 2008 and August 2011 in the Valley, some who died agonising deaths in hospitals. On an average, four people die of dog bites every year in the state. “And this figure may increase if we don’t control the number of dogs,” says Rehman.
Dr Muhammad Salim Khan of the Government Medical College (GMC), , fears that the dog population will overtake humans in the summer capital, which has 14 lakh people. Khan’s worries are backed by the latest dog census conducted by the Municipal Corporation (SMC), which recorded 91,110 dogs in the city. The dog-human ratio here is 1:13, while the nationwide figure is 1:36.
“If a bitch lives her entire lifespan of 14-16 years and produces nine puppies every six months from age 2 onwards, she will mathematically give birth to nearly 80,000 dog progeny in her life. It is feared that there will be around 20 lakh dogs in  in another five years, overtaking humans,” he says.
In , stray dogs are not considered man’s best friend, keeping in view the number of people they have attacked. In 2008, activists led by Maneka Gandhi had blocked the state government’s efforts to poison one lakh strays in , leading people to wonder aloud whether rights activists love dogs more than Kashmiris.
In uptown Batmaloo, Irfan recalls how years ago a huge dog seized his newborn brother from the patio of their house and ran towards the vegetable garden in the backyard. “The successful chase saw the dog dropping the bruised baby. But, even years after the incident, our family is still scared of stray dogs,” he says.
In some localities, stray dogs notorious for assaulting humans and cows have been given nicknames. In Maharajpora, locals often talk about the Paanch Paapi (five sinners), a group of stray dogs that has been terrorising schoolchildren and people going for their morning namaz. Likewise, Sikander and Khandey Rao send shivers down the spine of Gangbugh residents.
“During the canine census, we found that every locality has alpha dogs that are violent and aggressive. They dominate the territorial battles and are responsible for attacking humans,” says SMC veterinary officer Dr Sajad Ahmad Mughal.
The unusually high aggression is attributed to the protein-rich diet found in the non-vegetarian food waste, which is generally left to rot on the streets. The state consumes almost 51,000 tonnes of mutton and more than 1 crore chicken every year. According to the SMC, more than 380 metric tonnes of garbage and high-protein solid waste is generated every day in , which already has the distinction of being the fourth dirtiest city in India. About 60 percent of that waste is disposed of by the SMC, while a bulk of the rest ends up becoming food for the stray dogs.
While the job of culling dogs falls on the SMC, the city corporation has always been caught in a bind between animal rights activists on the one hand and angry residents on the other. In 2003, the SMC was forced to shelve a plan to sterilise male dogs. Recently, when it tried to send 20 workers to learn the art of catching dogs, the latter threatened an agitation saying, “The SMC can’t bully us into catching dogs.”
THEN A pied piper appeared. Last summer, the SMC tried to hire Khursheed Ahmad Mir, an MBA graduate and self-professed ‘pied piper’, who claimed that  can be rid of dogs humanely. Mir had claimed he had cleared monkeys from several areas of Jaipur, National Archives and Khuda Baksh buildings in Delhi. Mir, who is often awarded contracts to purge government hospitals of rats, had also claimed to have driven out 150 dogs from the upscale Sanat Nagar locality in .
However, after a series of negative stories appeared in the local press, Mir backed out saying the government couldn’t afford to pay him. One SMC official said that Mir was seeking a “shocking” fee of Rs 20 crore and his plans never had any “scientific basis or template”. “I think Mir’s plan was to catch the stray dogs and ferry them in a train to the Northeast, where dog meat is preferred by some communities,” says an official on the condition of anonymity.
Since the SMC is not allowed to poison dogs, there have been many instances when people would take matters in their own hands. In one such incident, almost 20 dogs in a posh  locality were secretly poisoned some years ago.
According to an SMC official, a struggling journalist sent pictures of the dead dogs to Maneka, who requested Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for his intervention. “After all the bashing the SMC received, that journalist is still struggling,” says the official jokingly. “Nobody understands that the people are angry. Their kids are being attacked and they want to kill the dogs on their own.”
The dog menace has reached the courts as well. In August 2011, the  High Court heard a PIL filed by social activist Nadeem Qadri. The HC had directed the government to create dog pounds as it feared that the “dogs will be stoned to death by locals”. In reply, the SMC told the court that it will need Rs 862 crore to construct pounds for neutering dogs.
The SMC’s project envisaged constructing 1,800 pounds, each having 50 kennels. The SMC said it would require 30 teams of three-member dog catching squads, 17 dog-catching vehicles, 3,600 caretakers, 1,800 cleaners and 360 night watchmen.
Ahmad Mir, a self-styled pied piper, offered to rid  of the stray dogs. But his offer was declined when he demanded Rs 20 cr
Last November, the SMC advertised dog-catching posts and held a talent hunt. Among 100 participants, 10 people in the age group of 20-30 years were finally selected. However, the plan was abandoned following criticism about the huge expenditure proposed on stray dogs.
Despite painting the scary scenario in which the city streets will be ruled by 20 lakh dogs, SMC Joint Commissioner Fayaz Ahmad Bala has a positive attitude. “We won’t let it happen. We can still stop the growth of dogs,” he says.
The SMC has signed an MOU with the Sher-i- Institute of Agricultural Sciences and Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), thanks to which some land in Ganderbal, located 18 km east of , has been earmarked to build a sterilisation camp where dogs will be neutered and then ferried back to their localities. “The cost of sterilising each dog will be Rs 800,” says Bala, adding that Rs 400 will be borne by the state and the rest by the AWBI.
The SMC’s latest plan involves catching canines in the early morning and late evening using nets, sacks and Y-poles. After ovario hysterectomia of bitches and neutering of male dogs, the animals will be marked with ear studs to avoid confusion. A canine will spend only five days in the camp before being ferried back to its locality.
While the SMC is confident that the new plan will halt the explosive growth in the dog population, the government doesn’t have an answer to the question posed by Chief Justice FM Ibraheem Kalif Ullah: “Will a dog stop biting after sterilisation?”
Another question that remains unanswered is, will the SMC’s sterilisation efforts match the pace at which the canine population is growing? Dr Salim Khan of the GMC estimates that on an average, 500 dogs have to be sterilised every day.
As the authorities grapple with the menace, the relatives of Wangnoo, who have been pacing the hospital corridor for days, are convinced that people must cull the dogs or else the canines will continue to hunt down children and adults alike. They allege that activists will always protect the rights of animals instead of caring about the human toll. This is something that most of the government officials deny on record but acknowledge in private.
(Published in Tehelka Magazine, Volume 9 Issue 7, Dated February 18, 2012)

http://www.tehelka.com/who-let-the-dogs-out/

 

REACTION

Doggyleaks: The Truth About Kashmir’s Canines And The Cost Of Negligence

March 24, 2012, Issue 12 Volume 9
Sterilising canines and a proper civic waste disposal system is the only proven and legal way to avoid the man-dog conflict, says Lisa Warden
ROADWAY DOGS discovered stockpiling WMDs in derelict Srinagar warehouse! Such an outlandish claim as this would serve the interests of a disinformation campaign worthy of George W Bush in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, as does much of the inflammatory rhetoric in ’s article, Who Let the Dogs Out? (TEHELKA, 18 February 2012). In the Kashmir case, though, substitute the Valley’s canines with Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, and let the liquidation of the enemy begin. Getting a handle on Kashmir’s canine woes, and those in India’s other cities for that matter, requires more than a regurgitation of the stock ‘dog menace’ clichés characteristic of India’s tabloid press.
Even dog-worshipping misanthropes agree that the dog attack on 12-year-old Srinagar resident Mudasir Ahmad Wangnoo was brutal and tragic. The issue, though, is where to attribute blame, and what to do about it. If one accepts the allegations in Umar’s article, Kashmir’s dogs are tearing apart the Valley’s residents with monotonous regularity all because India’s animal welfare activists have prevented their killing by authorities. He quotes scaremongering sources who claim that, for example, there will soon be more dogs than people in Srinagar, and that one female dog will give birth to 80,000 offspring in her lifetime. This sensationalism only obfuscates the issue. Let’s get a few facts straight.
First, dogs will never outnumber humans in Srinagar. Their population is relative to and dependent upon the human population, and will always be in keeping with the dog-to-human ratio found in the rest of India — between one and five dogs to every 100 people. Secondly, Indian dogs only produce one litter per year, not two. Third, the average life expectancy of street dogs in urban India, of dogs who survive to the age of one year, is 3.4 years (not 14-16 years as cited in the article). Only one or two puppies per litter actually survive in places where the habitat is at full carrying capacity. Each habitat has a maximum number of dogs it can support — which brings us to the question: why are there so many dogs in Srinagar? The answer is edible waste, and failure to implement WHO/AWBI-sanctioned methods for dog population and rabies control.
Last time I checked, public sanitation/waste disposal and public health were the responsibility of the government. The call for resumption of mass-killing of dogs in Srinagar is a knee-jerk reaction in response to nothing other than negligent governance.
Killing dogs, or their incarceration in pounds, simply does not work as a population-control policy. It has never worked anywhere it has been undertaken, even when the numbers of dogs killed or removed are in the tens of thousands, because dogs are so fertile that they simply repopulate the existing habitat in the subsequent breeding season. As long as there is a habitat, there will be dogs. And as long as that habitat is meat offal, dogs will be more aggressive in protecting their food source than if it were, say, dal and chapatis.
There is a solution to Kashmir’s canine woes, and it is as follows: sterilisation of over 70 percent of free-roaming dogs (and not just a small pilot project), and waste disposal reform. This is the only scientifically proven approach to resolving the matter, and the only legal one.
Are sterilised dogs ever a menace? On occasion, and those that engage in unprovoked attacks on humans need to be removed from the population by people qualified to know the difference. However, the two most significant factors that result in dog bites — migration and mating — are actually exacerbated by killing and/or impounding of dogs, and/or failing at the sterilisation project.
Sterilisation drastically reduces incidences of dog bites by eliminating maternal aggression and fights during mating. It also reduces the number of dogs. Are Kashmir’s various municipal authorities going to get on with addressing the problem by cleaning up the ubiquitous slaughter waste and sterilising over 70 percent of the dogs — a task for which various groups and agencies have bent over backwards to offer assistance, by the way — or will they continue scapegoating dogs and animal activists in a disingenuous attempt to cover up their own shambolic governance, while leaving residents, like 12-year-old Wangnoo and his family, to pay the price?
Lisa Warden is the former director of ABC India, a trust dedicated to rabies eradication and dog population management.
(Published in Tehelka Magazine, Volume 9 Issue 12, Dated March 24, 2012)
Howling Truths from the Valley
From once exhorting children to feed dogs to ward off nightmares, to making them the favourite hateobjects in Kashmir, Srinagar has come a long way
Jasjit Purewal (Board Member, Animal Welfare Board Of India, MOEF)
ON A CRISP August dawn last year, I ventured out for a walk by the Jhelum in Srinagar in search of the notorious Kashmiri dogs. I am intrigued to know what is unique about Kashmiri dogs that they want to attack and bloody humans indiscriminately. I am also here as an official of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) to see how I can resolve the ‘dog crisis’ in a humane, and legal way.
I spot two packs of 6-7 dogs at a garbage dump. Handsome with rich coats and fascinating markings, these dogs belong to the majestic Bhutia breed found in the Himalayan region. I approach them and at first they are indifferent, but quicken to my interest and immediately cower and take off, tails between their legs, fearful and unwilling to engage. Late that evening I go to another area and face the same response. Many look lean and hungry, yet unwilling to accept my treats. After a few days of the same, a few begin to wag their tails and a few approach me gingerly but even fewer will come near me as fear of humans dominates. It is obvious they are unused to human affection.
One official remarked, “The problem is that we don’t like dogs here. In fact, most people hate them.” On a daily basis, they face kicks, stones, sticks and abuse. No one feeds them. For survival, they lurk in packs. They hide by day, or at best sun themselves in derelict parks and cemeteries and emerge at night to feed. It is then that the meat-eating Valley, especially the butcher-intensive areas, dumps its waste on the streets.
There is a local tale of how mothers asked their children to feed local dogs to ensure they were safe from nightmares and evil forces. That was also a time when many non-Muslims lived in the Valley. Perhaps when the dogs lost all human affection and support, they became feral. Many tell me Islam considers dogs ‘impure’ and hence the dislike. I’m not sure how to respond to that because the Sajda Nasheen of Ajmer Sharif (descendant of the Pir Hazrat Moinuddin Chisti), Mr Natik, weeps when he speaks of the state of animals. He personally cares for many stray animals in Ajmer, particularly dogs, and tells me that if Allah would ensure the end of suffering for these abused animals, he would gladly give his life in return. He tells me Islam’s first tenet is compassion towards all sentient beings. He also tells me that the only reference to a dog in the Quran is about a ‘sinful’ woman who, in an act of kindness, quenched the thirst of an ailing dog and divinity granted her heaven in return.
As an AWBI official, I travel to Srinagar with such stories in the hope that I can turn the tide of hate towards these hapless animals. Their memories are laced with violence, slow death, poisoning and gunshot wounds. They still do not attack humans to kill. Unfortunate incidents like the 12-year-old boy who was mauled recently must have some other trigger.
The AWBI is a statutory body constituted under the Prevention of Cruelty Act (1960). It offers a systematic, scientific solution in the form of organised animal birth control (ABC). It is the mandate of every municipal corporation to control numbers of canine and other urban animals. For many years, AWBI was in negotiation with Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) to start ABC. We finally made a breakthrough last August when a far-sighted and committed SMC Commissioner agreed that killing dogs was not an option.
SMC carried out a census and found the man-dog ratio lower than other cities of India. In Delhi alone, we have close to five lakh dogs (though no real census exists) and yet we never hear of man-hunting dogs. Of the exaggerated, unconfirmed figure of 53,000 bite cases in four years in Kashmir, mentioned in the last article by Baba Umar, only four cases of rabies were reported. The bites increase apparently during Ramadan because there is early morning human activity which scares the dogs, who think it is their time of freedom; it is also when the fear psychosis of not letting a dog near for ‘impurity’ reasons is high. The mistrust and mutual fear amplifies the conflict. The other reason for bites can be lactating bitches who fear for their young. Sterilisation has ended the mating season aggression everywhere.
The army believes that the dogs are a critical support in warning against attacks and dubious strangers
On 22 September 2009, Lt Col NK Airy was quoted in the media as saying that dogs were a critical support to the army and security forces in warnings against attacks and movements of dubious strangers. A senior journalist and ex-AWBI member Hiranmay Karlekar questioned whether the new wave of anger against dogs in Kashmir was triggered by terrorists who wanted safe passage for their intentions. It is indeed a pertinent question why suddenly the media in Kashmir is regularly whipping up a tirade against dogs and culling is supported while all efforts to sterilise and manage their numbers is met with derision and indifference. The best veterinary college in the state has come forward to create a great facility for mass sterilisation. AWBI has been helping with the training and SMC with the commitment to carry it through. Mass-neutering in Sikkim, Jaipur and Chennai has brought bites, rabies and dog population exponentially down to near zero growth. AWBI is systematically joining hands with municipal corporations to ensure that we can achieve this in every city.
Kashmiri dogs are like every other dog in the world. Open to loving, and unquestionably loyal. The proof lies in the families who have adopted these strays in Srinagar.
Municipal failure at the root of menace
Baba Umar responds
WHEN I SPOKE to Fayaz Ahmad, joint commissioner of Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC), all the SMC counsels were present there. In fact, at one point he even went off the record to say that animal rights activists and some animal rights Acts (interestingly, none of these Acts can be implemented in J&K since the Assembly hasn’t ratified them) are hindering SMC efforts. It was he who revealed that the SMC is roping in the AWBI and the state government for its new sterilisation process, in which 800 will be spent on a single dog for sterilisation. Whatever figures I have quoted are from the SMC and government’s health department.
The SMC official directed me to their Health Officer, Dr Mughal. Since I already had figures and statistics, I wanted to understand the nature of stray dogs. Why do they attack people and children? Since Dr Mughal had been involved in the dog census too, he explained to me what exactly was leading to increased dog-attacks and why it is important to control their population.
People in the Valley do feel dogs must be poisoned. But officials say sterilisation should match the pace of growth of the dog population. Also, the AWBI member is hurt by the picture of menacing dogs, but doesn’t spare a word for the victim battling for life or the child who died months before this incident. It is true that using the word ‘terrors’ for dogs was unfair, so we changed the wording on the website.
The SMC vet official who is part of the team involved with the sterilisation facility coming up in Ganderbal area has been quoted. The dog kennels and what they call state-of-the-art neutering facility isn’t ready yet.
The PIL mentioned had questioned SMC’s demand of Rs 1,000 crore for dogs; later the SMC was made to ask the AWBI and the state government to find a middle path. The new sterilisation process will now need a mere Rs 5-8 crore.
Government figures about dog-bite cases in the past four years crossed the 53,000 mark in 2011 itself. We spend hundreds of crores on protecting tigers and leopards but when these animals become man-eaters, we either kill them or capture them. But the SMC failed to apply this principle in the case of dogs.
Security forces might be using dogs to alert them, but the SMC has always felt that forces were responsible for increasing the dog population. In fact, recently the CRPF was asked by Governor NN Vohra to stop rearing and feeding dogs . Vohra said stray dogs were dangerous to hangul (endangered deer species) in Dachigam National Sanctuary and that the IG CRPF must act within 24 hours.
We never reported that the dog-human ratio is lower than in other Indian cities. The report said the dog-human ratio (1:13) in Srinagar was more than the national average (1:36). This figure was recently quoted by state government officials in a seminar in Srinagar and at an anti-rabies workshop in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ne170312Howling.asp
From streets to social media, Kashmir’s stray dog debate goes virtual
Online campaigners say any real protests on the streets are checked by the police. Srinagar Municipal Corporation claims canine sterilisation drive has begun
Baba Umar 
New Delhi
As online forums refuel the debate on the menace of stray dogs in Kashmir streets, officials of the health department have begun a canine sterilising drive.
The campaign has gone online as those protesting against the administrations inability to tackle the stray dog menace say any real protests on the streets are checked by the police. The online campaigners who are outraged by the pictures showing children and women bitten by canines published in local dailies say their street protests are seen as administration’s failure and thus “curbed by police”.
The problem of strays, however, remains unchecked.
“We wanted to organise sit-ins but government has already imposed Section 144 of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) that prohibits assembly of more than five people at one place. However, it can’t stop us from furthering this human rights’ cause. We’ll find other legal ways to get rid of stray dog threat,” explained Farhana Latief, a law student of Kashmir University.
Latief’s Facebook campaign ‘Online protest against dog menace and carelessness of concerned officials’ is drawing widespread support.
Latief started the online campaign to appeal for support after reading about the attack on three-year-old Dua Meraj who was bitten on face and head by dogs on 31 March. “The kids who should be playing on the streets are locked indoors due to danger posed by stray dogs. I decided to organise sit-ins and launch online campaign against the dog menace,” she added.
Latief and her friends soon set up an online petition on Change.org and a campaign on twitter, #StrayFreeKashmir, demanding that the Srinagar Municipal Commissioner GN Qasba, Divisional Commissioner Kashmir Asgar Samoon and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, notice and take steps to solve the problem.
Latief says the online campaign is steadily gaining support “ as more people are sharing concerns and discussing the possible solutions”. Nadeem Qadri, a lawyer who has been at the forefront of campaign, says the story of canine menace in the Valley has just provided the media with “masala news”.
“Nobody comes up with research or a clear solution. Sterilization is just a short-term solution,” says Qadri whose Public Interest Litigation seeking action from authorities is being heard in the Srinagar High Court for over a year now.
Interestingly, while Qadri is pleading the case for humans, five lawyers are representing Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) and Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC). On 2 May, the High Court Bar Association (HCBA) petitioned before High Court of Srinagar praying for directions that the stray dogs be culled. This after a news report of stray dogs biting 51 people in Srinagar city on 30 April surfaced.
According to SMC census there are 91,110 dogs in the city. This puts the dog-human ratio in Srinagar city to 1:13 while the nationwide figure, according to experts, is 1:36. A survey by the state’s health department has found that 53,925 people were bitten by dogs between January 2008 and August 2011 in the Valley. On an average four people succumb to dog bite injuries each year.
A fresh petition filed by the HCBA president Mian Abdul Qayoom invoked views of Mahatma Gandhi over the issue of killing of stray animals. The petition even highlighted the Municipal Corporation Act of 2000 that empowers the Commissioner to “destroy or cause to be destroyed any dog who is without a collar or without a mark and is found straying on the streets or beyond the enclosures of the houses of their owners.”
Animal right activists and AWBI, have, so far maintained that the canine shouldn’t be killed but sterilised. “The AWBI has been helping with the training and SMC with the commitment to carry it through. Mass-neutering in Sikkim, Jaipur and Chennai has brought dog population to zero growth and with it bites and rabies cases have gone exponentially down. We can achieve this in every city,” AWBI member Jasjit Purewal recently wrote to TEHELKA.
Sterilisation, according to, Lisa Warden—a former director of Animal Birth Control (ABC) India—a trust dedicated to rabies eradication and dog population management, of over 70 per cent of free-roaming dogs, and waste disposal reform “is the only scientifically proven approach to resolving the matter, and the only legal one.”
Speaking to TEHELKA over phone from Srinagar, SMC Commissioner GN Qasba said he was aware of the online campaign and both SMC and animal rights activists were on the same page when it came to remedial measures to tackle the street dog menace.
“I appreciate their efforts, I’ve already made it clear to them that efforts like making Srinagar cleaner and garbage-free are on the cards which should help check the growing dog population in the city,” he said.
Qasba, however, refused to comment on the other districts of Kashmir where no census of dog population has been carried out yet. He said, “I am responsible for Srinagar city only. I can’t comment about the other nine districts.” Over the pace of sterlisation, Qasba said, “on first day seven dogs were sterilised in the SMC’s Shuhama in Ganderbal (East Kashmir) facility and we are looking forward to sterlise almost 100 dogs every day. In three years the problem posed by street dogs should be over.”
However, other experts say the pace is too slow to compete with the reproduction pace of dogs.
“The government has a capacity to sterilise only 40 canines a day right now. By the time 40 dogs are sterilised 400 new are born in streets,” warned Dr Salim Khan, member of Association for Prevention and Control of Rabies (APCR) in India. According to him sterilisation should complete in three months. “People don’t want mass culling of dogs. Some have to be spared for scavenging purposes. It’s those dogs who need sterilisation and their population shouldn’t be more than 5-10 percent of the current population.”
Interestingly, the online discussions on the canine-menace sometimes take religious angle too. Umar Farooq Bhat, a supporter of preserving lives of dogs invoked Prophet Mohammad’s saying as quoted in Islamic Book Sahîh Al-Bukhari that says, “A prostitute was forgiven by Allâh, because, passing by a panting dog near a well and seeing that the dog was about to die of thirst, she took off her shoe, and tying it with her head-cover she drew out some water for it. So, Allâh forgave her because of that.”
However, there was a quick rejoinder too. Mushtaq Beigh, another facebook user, quoted from the same book replied: “Five kinds of animals are mischief-doers and can be killed even in the sanctuary: They are the rat, the scorpion, the kite, the crow and the rabid dog.”
Farhana Latief’s Facebook campaign has nearly 626 members and the petition on Change.org has reached almost 300 signatures in past 16 days.
http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main52.asp?filename=Ws050512social_media.asp
 
KHUSHWANT SINGH REACTS 
 
 Killing stray dogs is no way to control population

Khushwant Singh, Hindustan Times   February 25, 2012

First Published: 21:44 IST(25/2/2012) | Last Updated: 21:48 IST(25/2/2012)
As an ardent dog-lover I find myself in the dog house (provoked by an article written by Baba Umar in the latest issue of Tehelka, entitled Who Let the Dogs Out? It drew the readers’ attention to the alarming increase in the incidence of dog bites in Kashmir. The top of two pages had a picture of over two dozen dogs waiting in the snow for some hapless tourists to arrive so that they could make a meal of him or her.
At first, I took it lightly. I gave a copy to Begum Dilshad Sheikh who spends her winters in the neighbouring block in Delhi. She is a beautiful woman and the heart-throb of our mohalla. I hoped after reading it she would postpone her departure for Kashmir.
I remain as ardent a dog-lover as I ever was. I have always had a dog as a companion since I was a child. Not one of them had a pedigree. Even in my years in England, I had a Cocker Spaniel but no certificate to prove it. My longest association lasting 14 years was with a German Shepherd Simba. We were as close to each other as any man and beast could be.
He not only answered to his name as all dogs do but was able to talk to me in his own language which I understood. When he brought my walking stick and put it in my lap, he meant to say “take me out or a walk.” I obeyed his orders and drove him to Lodhi Gardens. When he did the same after dinner, he meant to say “take me to Khan Market and buy me ice-cream cone.” I did it.
He looked forward to Sunday mornings when the family went out for a picnic. We let him out of the car before we reached our chosen spot. He would race along the car, chase cows — or a hare — and give it a run for its life. He took out his tongue to lick people to show affection. He sued his teeth only while hunting squirrels.
I could never get him out of the bad habit.
Simba was the most handsome dog of his species. But I had no certificate to prove his ancestry: he could have been a pi-dog or a mongrel. Yet owners of German Shepherd bitches pleaded with me to lend Simba’s services when their bitches were on heat. He carried out my orders with great zeal. At other times he would be accosted by a stray bitch on heat in Lodhi Gardens and obliged her with equal enthusiasm, while I sat on the lawn till he had finished.
Dogs come in many sizes ranging from the tiny chihuahua to the Great Dane or Rottweiler. It is only the medium-sized dog that resembles a wolf which is prone to act like one when provoked or hungry. It is this breed that has developed a taste for human flesh and is on the rampage in Srinagar.
Most of my friends are dog-lovers. I find it difficult to befriend anyone allergic to dogs. Reeta Devi’s husband Bheem after retiring as a manager of a tea estate used to spend his entire day feeding stray dogs with buffalo meat. They waited his arrival in packs in different parts of the city. My niece Veena Balwant Singh goes out every evening after she returns from office carrying packets of dog food for strays in Lodhi Gardens.
She also takes those who are sick to a vet for treatment.
We must not kill dogs to control their population. A more civilised way of keeping them in limited numbers is to have them sterilised. It costs around Rs800.