UP CM visits Sitapur, meets families affected by feral dog menace

Moving into new areas of the district, the ferocious dogs had injured two children on Thursday. While 7-year-old Abhishek was attacked by a pack of dogs in Machreta block, Geeta (9) was injured in the worst-hit Khairabad area, where six children have died this month in similar attacks. Twelve children have been killed by dogs in Sitapur since last November, District Magistrate Sheetal Verma said.

The attacks have generated such fear that school attendance has dipped, the police conduct patrols and men go to work in their orchards and fields armed with rods and axes. Verma said the latest case in Machreta block indicated that the dogs have now crossed the river and reached new areas from Khairabad. The area under the threat of dogs is also under drone camera surveillance, she said. So far, 42 dogs have been sent for sterilisation to Lucknow, she said.

Reacting to the chief minister’s visit, the opposition Samajwadi Party claimed that his visit came after party chief Akhilesh Yadav raised the matter. Samajwadi Party chief spokesman Rajendra Chowdhury said, “The CM spared time for visiting Sitapur when Akhileshji raised the matter of failure of the government in saving children yesterday. The government is not sensitive on our demand of providing Rs 10 lakh compensation to the affected families.”

Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday had mocked the Yogi Adityanath government, terming it as “encounter-wali sarkar”, taking a dig at it over several cases of police encounters. He said, “Encounter wali sarkar bacchon ko kutton se nahi bacha pa rahi hai (the goverment, which is carrying out encounters, has failed to save lives of children from dogs).”

Teams from WWF and Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Bareilly, have collected samples such as pug marks, bite-marks and post-mortem reports from the district in recent days. IVRI director R K Singh said the dogs used to feed on scraps from the slaughter houses in surrounding areas, but were not getting their regular diet now and had turned ferocious.

The state government has been shutting down illegal abattoirs over the past several months. Dinesh Chandra Chaubey, who headed the IVRI team, said detailed tests would be conducted in Hyderabad on samples collected from dogs killed by angry villagers. Sitapur’s District Inspector of Schools, Devki Singh, said schools in Khairabad have seen a big dip in attendance since May 1. Parents have been issued directions that adults should accompany children to and from school.

On May 1, three children were mauled to death by dogs in villages of Khairabad area after which the district administration called in a team from Mathura to catch the animals, officials said. On May 4, two more children were mauled to death. Veterinarian Anoop Gautam said dogs tend to become more violent when there is a shortage of food. There is also a chance that some nomads may have set their dogs free, he said.

Taking cognizance of the repeated incidence of such attacks in Sitapur, the Allahabad High Court had yesterday asked the Uttar Pradesh government to spell out the steps being taken up to curb the menace of feral dogs. However, it was felt that the problem may not be limited to Sitapur but may exist in other parts of the state as well.

The bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Abdul Moin passed the order on a PIL moved by a local lawyer and granted a month’s time to the state government to place its report before the court fixing July 4 as the next date of hearing.