SIDDIPET (TELANGANA): Close to 100 dogs were poisoned to death in a span of two days, allegedly on the orders of Siddipet municipality. The incident came to light when an animal activist from the area sent in videos of over 40 dogs dead bodies being transported in the municipality vehicle on Saturday.
In the video, the resident can be heard sobbing about the dogs and stating they were from her colony. "I was shocked to find all my dogs gone. They were not aggressive and never created any menace. If people complained, they should have exercised animal birth control instead of injecting poison into them," rued Vidhi, who first spotted the killings.
However, the workers seen in the video alleged they did it as per orders.
Swinging into action, a team of activists from Hyderabad rushed to the location to gather evidence and lodged a complaint and even as an FIR was registered under Prevention of Cruelty against animal Act and section 428 and 429 of IPC against unknown persons, a new batch of killing was reported.
"We filed a complaint on Saturday night and an FIR was booked. Considering evidence is crucial for conviction in such cases we went to look for the carcasses on Sunday morning and found them in the dump yard near Busaram forest. Just 30 minutes into the enquiry, we saw them bringing in a new batch of dead dogs in municipality vehicle," noted Teja P, an animal activist who was at the spot.
"The second batch of dead dogs comes as a shocker considering we reported to them on Saturday itself. The municipality is not practising scientific measures of managing dog population anywhere in Telangana and culling dogs when man-animal conflict increase," noted Pravalika Nigam, an activist from Compassionate Society for Animals.
The collector of Siddipet was unavailable for comment.