KOCHI: When the cleaning staff of Irinjalakuda municipality noticed a couple of stray dog carcasses on the roadside, they did not take that seriously and buried them as usual. But when five such mutilated bodies turned up in the neighbourhood, the latest on Kattoor Road, they sensed something suspicious. They also observed that skin and flesh were removed with sharp objects from the right side of the cadavers, keeping the ribs intact.
Looking at the wounds, they felt the dogs were not attacked by other animals but were cut up intentionally. Alarmed, some staff posted pictures of the mutilated bodies on social media. Soon, the posts went viral.
Municipality workers said the dogs were killed somewhere else and the carcasses were abandoned on the roadside as they could not detect blood spots from the area where the bodies were found.
Alerted by the pictures, Daya, a Kochi-based animal welfare organisation, complained to the police.
Irinjalakuda CI Sudheeran S P said the police would probe into the complaint and a postmortem of the carcasses would be performed after recording the complainants’ statements. The police would excavate the bodies for further analysis. So far six dogs have been found dead within a week.
Daya secretary Ramesh Kumar P B said the police must check the CCTV footage from the nearby areas to find the culprits. Postmortem analysis could reveal whether the dogs were drugged before they were killed.
The police said they are also planning to install CCTV cameras in areas currently not covered to identify anti-social elements.