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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: May 2007

Aftermath of Bangalore dog purge vindicates Animal Birth Control

 

BANGALORE--Newly released Bangalore dog bite data vindicates the local Animal Birth Control programs and demonstrates that the programs were working, until they were suspended in early 2007 amid a civic frenzy over two fatal dog attacks on children that occurred outside the ABC program boundaries.

Official Bangalore bite statistics collected and tabulated by veterinarian Susan Shaw, released in mid-April 2007, showed a 62% decline from 2005 through 2006 in dog bites requiring medical treatment, said Compassion Unlimited Plus Action cofounder Suparna Ganguly.

The numbers "reflect the ground reality before the tragic culling and displacement of dogs in March 2007," Ganguly told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "In March and April 2007, we feel that all our good work has been undone. Rabies has already returned to Bangalore."

"We succeeded in seeing that no humans died of rabies in Bangalore after 2003," elaborated Animal Rights Fund volunteer Poornima Harish to ANIMAL PEOPLE. "This is an opportunity to silence detractors. But I am very worried for the dogs."

The return of rabies to Bangalore was confirmed after ARF caught a biting dog in Ramachandrapura, a former suburb overtaken by urban sprawl, on March 28. The dog died two days later, and was confirmed rabid by post mortem examination on April 2. ARF immediately notified all relevant officials, but apparently nothing was done to find the bite victims while all government offices took a four-day holiday.

"We caught some dogs and did dog anti-rabies vaccination in the neighborhood," said Harish.

At request of Bangalore municipal veterinarian Prakash Reddy, ARF also sent an eight-member team to respond to a dog bite complaint in the Mariyappana Bhavi area, another suburb swallowed by the fast expanding city. A dog unknown to the neighborhood had bitten six people in an apparent rabid frenzy before being beaten to death by a mob.

ARF, "with the help of local residents and police, caught 20 dogs," who were held for observation, and retrieved the carcass of the dead dog. The dead dog was confirmed rabid. Returning to the scene, ARF ensured that all six known bite victims received post-exposure vaccination.

"In the recent past we seem to have developed a knack of attracting goons," Harish recounted. "We sure did on April 6, 2007. Our name, the Animal Rights Fund, to an illiterate person roughly equates with money: 'If you are from some Fund, give me money.' Out of nowhere, exactly as people described the dog attack, a goon came from nowhere and told our staff in a blackmailing sort of way, 'If you don't give me money, I will ensure that the dog bite victims don't take medicines.' It was good that our people went in a big team. We had enough people to see that while one person kept this rabid guy occupied with small talk, the critical counseling was handled by the other team members. It was important to isolate this guy."

Public education

Animal advocates on April 8 distributed nearly 100,000 copies of an newspaper insert promoting and defending the role of Animal Birth Control in preventing dog bites and rabies.

"We tried to cover almost all 100 wards of Bangalore, and also outlying areas such as Krishnarajapuram, which witnessed some horrific violence against animals," explained project coordinator Gopi Shankar. "We made efforts to cover all papers in both English and Kannada, and in all areas. But we are working from limited resources, and managed to cover just a quarter of the over 440,000 newspapers that are distributed in Bangalore every day."

CUPA on the same day began a series of Sunday sterilization and vaccination demonstrations in Bangalore parks. Eight dogs were sterilized and 29 were vaccinated on the first day of the program.
"Things are getting better, for the humane societies, but culling dogs in smaller towns and cities is still going on," CUPA chief veterinarian Shiela Rao told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "It is so arbitrary and sporadic that it makes no sense at all. Savitha Nagbhushan," whose photographs appeared in the April 2007 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, and in this edition, "has been tirelessly photographing mounds of dead dogs and preventing further culling in those towns that she visits, but [the killers, a mercenary crew from Kerala state] just move to the next location and repeat the process. "

"Killing in smaller towns is nothing new," pointed out Arpan Sharma and Erika Abrams, as cofounders of the recently formed Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations. "Local authorities do take recourse to random killing, wherever pressure from animal groups or local citizens [on dogs' behalf] is not strong. As far as we have been able to determine," Sharma and Abrams agreed, "killings in other cities are not a reaction to the events in Bangalore. It does not appear that Bangalore has started any sort of a chain reaction," but rather, the spotlight on Bangalore may have exposed the routine practices of outlying communities.

Mob attacks on dogs and municipal dog pogroms began in Chandra Layout, a Bangalore suburb, after three dogs killed a five-year-old girl named Sridevi on January 5, 2007. Exactly as CUPA, the Animal Rights Fund, and other Bangalore animal welfare organizations warned at the time, indiscriminately killing or impounding dogs other than those directly involved in the attack only opened habitat to others.

Often dogs who had been sterilized and vaccinated were replaced by unvaccinated, unsterilized dogs from outlying districts, who invaded the city to take advantage of meat wastes that continue to be dumped in vacant lots by illegal butchers. Typically dogs follow migrant construction workers into the city, taking up residence wherever they find an unguarded food source.

"Now, there are dogs who do not belong here, bigger and more ferocious. I cannot let my children out for fear that they might be hurt," Chandra Layout resident K.N. Chandrasekhar complained to Swathi Shivanand of The Hindu.

Other suburbs were afflicted by dog-dumping, as catchers paid by the head tried to unload dogs as quickly as possible.

Nine residents of Somasandrapalya, a Bangalore suburb, were bitten on March 22-23. At least four were younger than school age. Two suffered head bites, one of them a four-year-old girl who was bitten on the nose.

Haralur Welfare Association president Srinivasa Reddy told The Hindu that Bangalore employees "brought a van full of stray dogs, probably from the dog pounds after they were sterilised, and left them in our area on March 18. The problem started after that," Reddy said.

Almost certainly the dogs were not sterilized, as the Bangalore area ABC programs were suspended at the time, due to lack of municipal support.

Hemanth Kumar, 6, of Yelahanka, a northern suburb of Bangalore, died from rabies on April 9, two weeks after a dog bit his legs on March 25. He was treated at a local clinic, but reportedly did not tell his parents immediately, and did not receive post-exposure vaccination.

Neighbour S. Parthasarathy told The Hindu that others had also been bitten, and that dogcatchers from Bangalore "seem to be releasing dogs from other areas to our area."

Animal Help

Yelehanka "is not covered by ABC, or for that matter any sort of dog management," observed Gopi Shankar. "Yelahanka is one of the areas in which the Animal Help Foundation is expected to sterilize 1,000 dogs," Shankar added.

Having sterilized more than 45,000 dogs in Ahmedabad during 2006, using much faster and more stringently aseptic procedures than the Indian norm, the Animal Help Foundation is now offering to introduce the same methods to other cities around India. Bangalore and Hyderabad are among those accepting the offer, but the start of work in Bangalore was delayed because Animal Help founder Rahul Sehgal requires guaranteed full municipal funding. Having not paid the local ABC programs for their services, as contracted, since September 2006, Bangalore officials balked at paying Animal Help.
"Considering that nearly four months have lapsed since the first unfortunate incident in Bangalore, if only the city's authorities had tackled this problem in a scientific and rational manner, Hemanth Kumar's death would perhaps not have happened," charged Shankar.

Requesting "patience and accurate reporting" from Bangalore news media, Animal Help founder Rahul Sehgal was soon disappointed when one newspaper alleged that the Animal Help program was off to a "dismal start," after only one day on the job.

"My team is settling down, and they need to be given some time to get adjusted to the new environment, where people don't speak their language, don't eat their food, and definitely do not understand them," Sehgal said. "They are in your city to help you and work with you. I leave the judgment to you as to what will help us get motivated to work harder and what kind of a support we really need to get comfortable in Bangalore.

"I have contracted to spay/neuter 5,000 dogs in five months, and promise to achieve it. We might do only 1,000 till July and may complete 4,000 more in August. This is entirely dependent on circumstances beyond our control, so kindly give the project some time to establish itself."

Steering for political middle ground, Karnatake High Court Justices Chidanand Ullal and Ashok B. Hinchigeri on April 17, 2007 ordered the Bangalore city government to "expeditiously take steps to tackle the stray dog menace," and "spare no effort to ensure human safety," but recommended that dogs be impounded for care by nonprofit organizations, funded by the city--as is already done.
Petitioner Krishna Bhat had asked the court to suspend Animal Birth Control programs that release dogs in Bangalore, and reinstitute killing dogs as official policy. Bhat contended that ABC programs violate constitutional provisions guaranteeing the lives and liberty of Indian citizens, and that sterilizing dogs had only made them more dangerous. His petition was endorsed by the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority.

Further action on the case was postponed until May 29.