A bench of the High Court while hearing the case referred to an incident too when one of the HC judges was bitten by a stray dog in the national capital
New Delhi : Menace of stray dog bites has reached now the courtrooms in the country too. Referring to an incident when a judge of Delhi High Court was bitten by a stray dog, a bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva directed the civic bodies to submit detailed status report on controlling stray dog populations in the national capital.
The bench said the status report shall indicate the number of sterilizations carried out on stray dogs and how many of them have been returned to localities they were picked up from.
“There is a menace, no doubt about it as one of our judges was also bitten by a stray dog,” the bench said while issuing the directions. The court issued the directions after Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) told the court that in order to control the menace of stray dogs it was necessary that Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules be implemented in letter and spirit. AWBI told the court that the Rules were not being implemented. The court also took note of Tuesday’s incident of a seven-year-old child dying due to bites of a pack of stray dogs and directed the municipal corporation of South Delhi to file a status report on that.
The court also observed that compensation should be provided to those affected by such incidents. However, AWBI told the court that in a similar matter in which the Uttarakhand High Court had ordered compensation, the Supreme Court had set the same aside.
The high court asked AWBI to place before it the apex court order and listed the matter for further hearing on August 26.
The court was hearing a PIL filed by an NGO, Nyaya Bhoomi, seeking directions to Delhi government and municipal authorities to take action as well as frame guidelines to address the “growing menace” of stray dogs and dog bites.