(IN): Slumdog tragedy

February 20, 2009

Stray dogs kill boy in Meerut

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

*Lucknow, Feb. 19: *A five-year-old boy has been killed by a pack of stray

dogs in Meerut.

Anuj " was attacked from all sides and from his wounds it looked like a tiger

had mauled him " , the chief medical officer, Meerut, S.C. Maheswari, told *The

Telegraph*.

The boy, who was attacked on Tuesday afternoon, died this morning.

Anuj, the son of day labourer Deepchand Singh, " apparently walked into an

area where some carcasses of animals were left along with discarded food

items. It was like a garbage dump " , Maheswari said.

The dogs pounced on him and as he kept crying, they bit him on his head,

hands and legs for almost five minutes.

By the time Anuj's father, who was working in a nearby farm, heard him, the

boy was left bleeding on the ground. He was taken to Lok Priya Medical

Centre.

" I thought my son was playing with the dogs when he was being chased by them

but the cut marks and blood on his face made me rush to him, " said Singh, a

resident of the Kazipur area in the west Uttar Pradesh town.

Local people said the boy was attracted to a packet of food in the dump

which was always in control of hungry dogs. They said that over the last one

year, stray dogs had attacked several people all over Meerut.

but this was the first time that a child had been killed. Last week, Mumtaz,

an eight-year-old, came to a Meerut hospital with gaping dog bites.

Shashank Singh, a social worker, said local people had launched a campaign

asking the municipality to sterilise stray dogs but it failed to curb the

menace.

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