Don’t chickens, goats have lives?: Supreme Court says on stray dogs

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of India continued to consider a number of petitions pertaining to the problem of stray dogs, challenging arguments that just focused on dogs and inquiring, “What about other animal lives? What about chickens and goats? Don’t they have lives?”

A petitioner stood in front of the court during the hearing and tried to present a picture of a ninety-year-old man who was supposedly bitten by stray dogs and died as a result of his wounds. The petitioner said, “See, this is what happens when stray dogs attack.” The court stopped the attempt, saying, “There is no need to show this photo.”

“People are suffering due to stray dogs,” the attorney told the court while arguing on behalf of the victims. Human rights must be upheld. The attorney cited foreign practices, stating that “drambox” kill shelters exist in the USA and Japan, where stray dogs are brought to shelter houses and put to death if they are not adopted. He continued by saying that this is the reason Japan has not had any rabies fatalities since 1950 and does not have a stray dog problem.

An animal rights activist earlier submitted, “We are talking about putting all stray dogs in the pounds. What are we going to do about the garbage and monkeys if the dogs disappear?”

The court also heard testimony from the father of an eight-year-old girl who was bitten by stray dogs in Noida last year. He claimed that despite numerous reports, the Noida Authority was doing nothing in a different case last year involving the death of an eight-year-old child. Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) ought to be permitted to designate their communities as “no dogs zones,” according to his argument.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing in the matter, said, “We are here as dog lovers and as lovers of the environment.” When the court asked, “What about other animal lives? What about chickens and goats? Don’t they have lives?”, Sibal replied, “I have stopped eating chicken because they are caged in such cruel manner.” He added, “The other side is that if one tiger is a maneater all tigers don’t have to be killed as maneaters.”

Sibal said, “Across the world the capture, sterisilise, vaccinate, release- CSVR model is followed,” adding that it “has brought down dog population in cities to almost zero levels” and was successful. 

He contended that removing stray canines would exacerbate the issue in a nation like India, where slums and waste dumping are commonplace. Additionally, he said that municipal corporations had neglected to enlist agencies and non-governmental organizations to perform work in accordance with the ABC guidelines, and that maintaining strays in shelters would put a significant financial strain on local authorities.

Speaking on behalf of animal welfare organizations, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves claimed that because each injection dose was recorded as a distinct dog bite case, the data on dog bites was “five to seven times the actual number.” He warned of the “drastic and irreversible consequences” of seizing stray dogs because of hysteria, citing data showing no rabies cases in 19 states since 2021.

The court observed, “Our order was modified and restricted to the institutional areas, not the roads. Why do we need stray dogs inside schools or hospitals or courts? What’s the objection to removing them from institutional areas?”