Stray dog goes missing from shelter, found charred to death

Nagpur: The civic body’s failure in managing stray dog population is causing uncontrollable incidents of man-animal conflict in the city. On Friday, one of the four missing stray dogs from a shelter was found completely burnt, with its ribs broken.
The dog was an inmate of an animal shelter run by NGO Save Speechless Organization (SSO) in Hazaripahad. The dog was rescued by the NGO volunteers in 2017 when it got injured in a road hit at Katol naka. Though the dog had recovered after two months, the NGO could not release it as the animal’s original locality could not be known.
Four dogs of the shelter had gone missing a few days ago. On Friday, the NGO members found one of the missing dogs dead, killed in the most brutal way possible. “The dog was found hardly 300 metres from our shelter. Even though the remains had completely turned black and were covered with maggots, we could recognize it,” said founder of SSO Smita Mire.
She immediately filed a police complaint following which a first information report (FIR) has been registered against an unknown person at Gittikhadan police station. Cops are reportedly investigating the matter.
As per initial post-mortem examination, the ribs of the dogs were broken and its legs were tightly tied-up. “Medical examiners informed us that the dog was brutally beaten up before it was burnt,” said Mire.
According to her, the NGO has been receiving threats from locals for the last few months. “Currently, there are about 150 dogs in our shelter premises that are being treated. Once recovered, the healthy dogs are released as we do not have the capacity to keep them within the premises. Some dogs choose to linger in the area, and depend on us for their morning and evening meals,” she said.
Since the cases of dogs attacking people started coming to the fore, the NGO started receiving threats. “A group of locals has been constantly pressuring us despite the fact that the dogs have not done any harm. It feels as if this incident was a warning for us,” she said.
Mire blamed Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and the district Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) for the rising conflict between dogs and humans. “If the taxpayers’ money was spent duly on animal birth control, we could have co-existed happily. Lives of both humans and dogs would not have been in danger,” she said.
She further stressed the need for a proper infrastructure for animal welfare. “It’s been more than two years since sterilization is not being done. We have limited space and can’t accommodate a lot of dogs,” she said.