People, who suffered injuries in stray dogs’ attacks, will get financial assistance of a minimum of Rs 10,000 per teeth mark, said the Punjab and Haryana High Court while holding the state as “primarily responsible” for paying compensation in such cases.
The high court, while disposing of a bunch of 193 petitions, ruled that in dog bite cases, the assistance minimum of Rs 10,000 “per teeth mark” and a minimum of Rs 20,000 per 0.2 cm of wound where the flesh has come off, Indian Express reported.
It also ordered Punjab, Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh to constitute committees chaired by the deputy commissioners of respective districts to determine such compensation.
The order came as hundreds of incidents of stray dogs attacking humans have also made it to the news in recent years.
Notably, Parag Desai, the executor director of Wagh Bakri Tea Group, died last month, after he got injured outside his home in Ahmedabad while trying to ward off street dogs that attacked him.
In September, a teenage boy in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad died of rabies after he hid a dog bite from his parents for over a month out of fear of being scolded.
Why Stray Dogs Attack, Who is Responsible for Dog Bites & What Do Laws Say | EXPLAINED
STRAY DOG POPULATION AND DOG BITE CASES?
As per reports, there are over 1 crore pet dogs in the country, while the stray dog population is about 3.5 crore.
The National Crime Records Bureau data shows there were 4,146 reported cases of dog bites leading to human deaths in the country in 2019. A separate data shows that the country witnessed over 1.5 crore dog bite cases since 2019.
Uttar Pradesh, with the highest number of strays, saw the highest incidents with 27.52 lakh cases, followed by Tamil Nadu (20.7 lakh) and Maharashtra (15.75 lakh).