Anti-ABC backlash after fatal dog attacks is burning out in Bangalore

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

 

 

Anti-ABC backlash after fatal dog attacks is burning out in Bangalore

 

 

BANGALORE--Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny

Krishna, architect of the Indian national Animal Birth Control

policy, had for 10 years predicted a violent backlash. Dog-haters,

Krishna warned, would ally with opportunistic politicians seeking a

" wedge " issue to attack pro-ABC governments.

ABC had to succeed so completely in preventing rabies and dog

attacks as to avoid giving anti-dog factions any opportunity to gain

momentum-- " Because once the cities start killing dogs again, "

Krishna predicted over and over, " they will not stop. "

Once dog-killers are back on the public payroll, Krishna

explained time and again, they would again become part of India's

sprawling bureaucracy, with reinforced political backing.

If the history of ABC ever enters textbooks, the first

months of 2007 may be remembered for the Battle of Bangalore,

beginning with a January 5 fatal pack attack on a nine-year-old girl

named Sridevi, near a lot used for dumping meat wastes in a

shantytown suburb beyond reach of local ABC programs.

A prompt response by the ABC program chiefs quelled the

initial backlash, as detailed by Animal Rights Fund volunteer

Poornima Harish in the March 2007 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE. ARF had

warned in 2002 that illegal meat shops were encouraging dog packs to

form in that very area.

But much of Bangalore exploded against dogs when a second

fatal attack occurred on March 1, also near a site where meat wastes

were dumped, also beyond the limits of the ABC programs as defined

by their municipal contracts.

" Four-and-half-year-old Manjunath was playing with his

friends, " the Times of India reported, " when the dogs caught him in

their jaws and dragged him across the open ground. Within seconds,

the murderous pack had almost severed his neck. The last words of

this little boy were 'neeru, neeru,' " meaning " water, water. "

Surgeons tried for nine hours to save Manjunath, to no avail.

" An agitated crowd of 400 " rallied after Manunath's funeral,

asking the authorities to " eradicate street dogs, " said The Hindu.

" Vociferous demands for resignation of Health Minister R.

Ashok and Bangalore commissioner K. Jairaj disrupted traffic for over

half an hour, " added the Deccan Herald.

" Indiscriminate killing of dogs has never been the solution

for dog control management, " World Health Organization zoonotic

disease chief F.X. Meslin told a March 3 press conference in

Bangalore, explaining that the Animal Birth Control approach " is the

best way to stabilize dog numbers. "

" While public outcry is understandable, it is imperative to

be rational, " Animal Welfare Board of India chair R.M. Kharb added,

emphasizing that " ABC needs to be extended on a much larger scale,

executed by a highly motivated and professional team. "

But even as they spoke, The Hindu recounted, a dog bit a

10-year-old girl. A mob killed the dog.

Mayhem spread to the Sunnadakeri district of Mysore a day

later, The Hindu reported, where a mob bludgeoned a dog who was

believed to have bitten four children.

" Sunnadakeri resident Jogi Manju said there were six meat

stalls in the locality and all of them dumped wastes on which dogs

fed, " The Hindu noted. " Manju said children played on the same road

and the dogs tended to fear that their food would be snatched. "

The Mysore government by midnight " launched an operation to

catch and cull dogs, " The Hindu added. " Officials claimed that

only 47 dogs were given lethal injections, but according to

eyewitnesses the number was higher. Officials claimed that only

ferocious dogs and those displaying signs of rabies were culled, but

it was obvious that even timid and friendly dogs were not spared.

" Seven meat stalls were closed down at Sunnadakeri and eight

in other parts of the city, " The Hindu continued.

Back in Bangalore, " The fight spilled into a very hot

political arena, " Harish told ANIMAL PEOPLE, " with government taking

it as an issue, the Bangalore commissioner under terrible attack,

the media unrelentingly dishing up sensational and terribly damaging

statements. All of the animal welfare organizations have been

accused of embezzling, by both Kannada and English press, without a

shred of evidence.

" Were it not at the cost of so many innocent lives, the

political drama would have provided comic relief, " Harish said.

" Till now I have not understood who was using this issue. Knives

were drawn for dogs and for animal welfare organizations, in that

order, " Harish explained, naming at least three political factions

who tried to exploit the crisis.

" Chastised by public uproar against the stray dog menace, "

trumpeted the Times of India, " health minister R. Ashok declared on

Friday that all stray dogs would be euthanised within a month.

" We'll intensify the culling and killing without mercy. As

health minister, I'm not happy with the animal welfare

organizations' work, " Ashok fulminated.

 

Dog heroes

 

Observed M. Radhika of Tehelka: The People's Paper, " The

city's media is siding with those who want stray dogs killed, so much

so that mere bites are now being reported as crime stories. Lost in

frenzy is the story of how dogs helped save a newborn's life in the

forests of Devarayanadurga in Tumkur on March 9. An unwed mother

abandoned her child in the forest, but a pack of dogs, who had

followed her, stood guard over the infant all night to prevent any

attack by other animals. The next morning, a passerby found the

child and, as it chanced, took the baby to the same woman, who

wept with joy, having spent the night in guilt. "

The Devarayanadurga incident was verified by other media.

Commissioner Jairaj " has requested us to be with him and not

alienate ourselves, " said Harish. " We have had years of relations

with the city government, and they, I feel, value the association.

We have been told, almost ordered, to be sensitive to public

sentiments, which are fragile and can explode; to refrain from

answering provocative questions from the media; to be part of the

drive to round up feral dogs, those who run in packs, and those who

bring complaints; and to shelter and evaluate the dogs who are

brought in. "

Jairaj by March 5 had reassigned 30 municipal trucks to

dogcatching, each staffed with three garbage handlers to do the

captures, a policeman to guard them, and a health officer. As the

garbage handlers proved unable to clear the streets of dogs, Jairaj

two days later hired " 12 professionals from the Malabar region of

Kerala, " The Hindu reported, who snared 491 dogs on their first day

of work.

The " 12 professionals " are believed to have been a team from

Trivandrum who were trained by Animal Rescue Kerala to assist an ABC

program. Instead, ARK founder Avis Lyons told the Asian Animal

Protection Network, they used their training " to kill most of the

street dog population in Trivandrum. "

Since then, they have worked in other cities as a mercenary hit

squad, killing as many as 1,000 dogs in November 2006 at Conoor and

Kotagiri, after a dog injured a child, according to Fay Vohra of

the India Project for Animals & Nature.

The first dogs caught in Bangalore were taken to the local

ABC headquarters.

" There are dogs in the van parked outside. There is no space

to keep them inside, " said Harish.

" We had to turn away one van because we did not have space to

keep the dogs, " said a Karuna ABC staffer named Dharneesh.

The Compassion Unlimited Plus Action hospital and shelter,

across a side street from Karuna on the Hebbal Veterinary College

Campus, took in 200 dogs, in addition to those already there.

" We don't know where they originated--the vans just brought

them, and we housed them till we could not manage any more, "

director Suparna Ganguly e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. " They just

started picking up all sterilized dogs on the road. "

" The commissioner ordered that only sick, ferocious and

dangerous dogs should be taken, but innocent dogs were picked up, "

agreed CUPA treasurer Sanober Bharucha.

The extra work obliged the ABC programs to suspend doing

surgeries--for which they had not been paid by the city in six

months. The suspension was also a warning to public officials that

the ABC directors felt they had been unfairly blamed long enough,

and hoped to see some signs of support.

When after six days there was nowhere left to put dogs, the

captures appeared to stop. Dogs already in custody remained in

trucks outside the ARF, Karuna, and CUPA facilities for days,

receiving volunteer care and feeding, while the city built three new

holding areas for dogs at outlying sites.

By March 9, Jairaj told The Hindu, 1,297 dogs had been

captured. " Of these 221 were culled, " he said. Later the same day,

Jairaj told Habib Beary of BBC News that more than 2,000 dogs were

caught.

 

Secret killing

 

" Unable to accommodate hundreds of dogs, Bangalore officials

are exterminating the dogs and dumping their carcasses, " Afshan

Yasmeen of The Hindu revealed. " According to sources at the dog

pounds, the canines are either electrocuted or injected with poison.

The method of disposal is posing a health hazard to villages near the

dumping yards. The villagers, who have always complained about the

unbearable stench of the garbage dumped there, are now protesting. "

Residents of three villages stopped four truckloads of dead

dogs, Yasmeen said.

" With private contractors refusing to transport the carcasses, the

civic body is using its own garbage lorries, " Yasmeen continued.

Barred from the Bangalore pound at Koramangala, Yasmeen and a

photographer, " noticing that dogs were being taken to the city's

dysfunctional asphalt plant across the road, sneaked into the

premises and found heaps of dog carcasses, " Yasmeen added.

The Times of India in particular continued to inflame public

fury against dogs, the city government, and ABC, " But the tide has

turned, " CUPA veterinarian Shiela Rao told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

" A very active group of young supporters has been busy. One

lot stormed into the Times' office, demanded to see the editor and

threatened to burn his paper on the streets if he continued this

biased reporting, " Rao said. " Another called the Bombay head

office, got to speak with someone from the management, and filed a

complaint against the local editor. She also alerted a news channel

to the whereabouts of one of the dogcatching vans, who followed it

and gave a moving account of the dogcatching drive. A senior editor

of the Hindustan Times, now retired, has worked overtime from

Kolkata, " diagonally across India, " to stop biased and libelous

reporting. "

People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi " has been right there too, "

Rao added, " working with political leaders, since her party is a

coalition partner of the Bangalore government. "

 

Governor objects

 

" Condemning the move to indiscriminately cull street dogs in

Bangalore and Mysore, Governor T.N. Chaturvedi on Tuesday sent a

strongly worded letter to Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, asking

for a scientific approach to deal with street dogs, " reported Swathi

Shivanand of The Hindu.

" The real issue, " Chaturvedi wrote, " is that for the last

two or three decades, the municipal authorities and government

departments concerned have failed in their responsibilities. This is

the cumulative result. "

About 500 people on March 12 rallied in Bangalore against

indiscriminate dog captures. Protester Jeremy D'Souza told BBC News

that most of the dogs caught in his neighborhood had notched ears,

indicating that they had been sterilized and vaccinated.

" Pictures taken by D'Souza showed one dog being hauled into a

cage on a truck upside-down by a wire cord around his hind legs, "

reported Beary.

Bangalore animal advocate and photographer Savitha

Nagabhushan gathered further shocking evidence that morning in

Mandya, 120 kilometres to the south. Responding to a tip, " leaving

Bangalore at dawn, Nagabhushan and two friends searched Mandya until

they discovered a city truck full of dead dogs, " recounted Varuna

Verma of the Daily Telegraph. " Posing as a dog-hater, Nagabhushan

asked the workers if she could see how the dogs were caught and

killed.

" The dogs were caught with a wire. Cyanide was injected into

their stomachs or hearts, depending on how much they resisted, "

Nagabhushan told Verma. " The dog-catcher said he was paid per dog

corpse. "

" The killing was not only horrifying and cruel but also against the

law, " reported Maya Sharma of NDTV. " There are rules that absolutely

forbid killing healthy street dogs. They are instead meant to be

sterilised, vaccinated and released where they have been caught,

under the ABC rules.

Mandya district commission M.A.M. Ramaswamy confirmed to

Sharma, she continued, " that dogs in his city had been killed by

two so-called experts from Kerala who had been called in by the state

government to reduce the dog population in Bangalore. He said he did

not know how many dogs had been killed, and that the killing had

totally stopped after a call from Maneka Gandhi. "

Recounted Verma, " Back in Banga-lore, the video created an

uproar. Governor Chaturvedi demanded an explanation. Bangalore's

massive month-long dog hunt was called off indefinitely. "

 

Trouble spreads

 

" The killing in Bangalore stopped, but it did not stop in

the suburbs and other towns in Karnataka, " Suparna Ganguly said.

Even in Chennai, far from Karn-ataka, home of the Blue

Cross of India, Animal Welfare Board of India, and the oldest ABC

program in the world, " Residents of the southern suburbs are

clamouring for an immediate solution to the problem of stray dogs,

after a 4-year-old child was chased and bitten by a pack in

Guduvanchery, " reported K. Manikandan of The Hindu, adding 10 days

later, " Residents are impatient. There is a perception that ABC

will not yield immediate results. A dearth of anti-rabies

post-exposure vaccine is compounding the anger. "

In Chitradurga, The Hindu reported on March 11, " Following

the directions of the district administration, civic authorities

started culling stray dogs. Nearly 200 dogs have been killed. The

operation is being carried out in areas where there are a large

number of mutton and chicken shops. According to a rough estimate,

the city has over 2,000 stray dogs and the administration has decided

to cull at least 1,000. Last year over 600 dogs were killed. "

In Bidar, The Hindu added, " The Bidar city council was

silent even after nearly 1,000 dog bites were reported in the last

two months. However, apparently influenced by anti-dog operations in

Bangalore and Mysore, city personnel have killed about 40 dogs in

the last three days. "

Rumors originating in Europe that Delhi would massacre dogs

in anticipation of the 2010 Commonwealth Games raced around the

Internet, but were refuted by People for Animals Haryana chair

Naresh Kadyan and Commonwealth Games chief executive Michael Hooper.

 

ABC restarted

 

" The Bangalore dogs are traumatized, dislocated and very

stressed, " lamented Suparna Ganguly. " The government has done

incalculable harm to years of hard work. There are about 800 animals

in the city shelters, captured and dumped. Almost 95% were

sterilized. I don't know how Bangalore plans to resume the ABC

progam. "

Karnataka Chief Secretary P.B. Mahishi on March 13 directed

Bangalore commissioner Jairaj to hire Animal Help Ahmedabad founder

Rahul Sehgal to introduce the high-volume ABC techniques that enabled

Animal Help to sterilize 45,000 dogs in Ahmedabad in 2006.

Sehgal calls the Animal Help method CNVR, short for " Capture,

Neuter, Vaccinate, Return. "

" I am sending one of our CNVR teams on April 1 to carry out

CNVR on 5,000 dogs within five months in five newly annexed wards of

Bangalore, " Sehgal told ANIMAL PEOPLE. " These areas are untouched

by ABC, and are assigned on a pilot basis. My idea is to implement

probably the world's largest-ever awareness and education program,

with CNVR in the background. "

Sehgal anticipated that his team would share their techniques

with the local ABC programs.

" The best news, " Sehgal said, " is that my entire project

is fully funded by the municipality. " Having shown the ability to do

CNVR more efficiently than anyone else in India, and more of it than

any other organization in the world, Animal Help now demands full

municipal funding with a start-up advance wherever they go--and gets

it.

While continuing work in Ahmedabad at a rapid pace, Sehgal

told ANIMAL PEOPLE, " we are starting CNVR in Gurgaon for 25,000 dogs

in 2007, and another 25, 000 dogs in 2008. We are also undertaking

an oral rabies vaccine project, to distribute 25,000 doses over the

next five years [to dogs not reached by CNVR] according to the World

Health Organization guidelines. "

Anti-dog tension might have reignited on March 13, " when

four dogs attacked a seven-year-old near his school in Ulsoor, The

Hindu reported. " Yashwanth M., " who was hospitalized, " was injured

in the head, legs, and back. " Two friends, Bhaskar and Sujith,

" threw stones at the dogs and beat them with a stick to chase them

away, " The Hindu said.

Yet dog purges were no longer so easily incited. Mangalore,

for example, was " all set to cull dogs in the city, following the

footsteps of Bangalore, " the Deccan Herald reported on March 16,

until the Animal Care Trust mobilized opposition.

Explained Animal Care Trust treasurer Suma Ramesh at a public

meeting, " The dog menace is not an isolated issue as such, but goes

hand in hand with the issue of solid waste management. "

Added the Deccan Herald, " Various citizens who have lost

their dogs in the anti-dog drive spoke on the occasion. "

" Erode Municipality officials say that starting March 14,

they have begun an ABC program, in which they plan to sterilise 30

dogs a week, " reported Karthik Madhavan of The Hindu. Also, " At

almost all the garbage collection points, " an Erode official told

Madhavan, " bins have been placed. Hotels and roadside eateries have

been asked to dump garbage only in bins. "

In nearby Veerappan Chatram, Madhavan added, where " the

garbage mounds almost equal the dog population, " officials said that

" They intend to start the paperwork for an ABC program after April 1.

They attribute the delay to lacking a health inspector. That the

city has no infrastructure to carry out an ABC program is another

story, " but of note was that claiming to prefer ABC over killing

dogs was apparently back in favor.

But not everywhere. The Hindu disclosed on March 27 that

Savitha Nagbhushan and a Bangalore friend, L. Srinivasan, " have

recorded footage of street dogs being rounded up in Anekal, killed

allegedly with cyanide, and dumped along with garbage. " Anekal

residents said the killing began on March 23. Nagbhushan and

Srinivasan were told that the dogcatchers were the " experts from

Kerala. "

The Bangalore crisis " has been a terrifying example of how

ill-informed media and corrupt and inept public officials can come

together to start a slaughter of the innocents, " summarized Chinny

Krishna. " Let us hope this never happens again. " --Merritt

Clifton

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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