Rajasthan: Stray Dog Takes Away Baby From Hospital
In another incident, a stray dog mauled a one old baby from a hospital in Rajasthan.
Recently ISH News had released a video of a stray dog mauling a 5 year boy to death in Hyderabad. You can check out the news here. (ISH News link: https://youtu.be/FGHCG7tCGuY
Now just a few days after the incident, another similar incident occurred in Rajasthan. A month-old baby was sleeping next to his mother, Rekha at a Rajasthan government hospital. The baby’s father was admitted to the hospital and the mother along with the 3 kids was attending to the father but suddenly dozed off. Police said the CCTV footage showed that two dogs went inside the TB ward of the hospital late Monday night - 27th February and one of them returned with the infant. The body was found outside the hospital ward. The police officer said the hospital staff was also not present at the ward at the time of the incident and the Post-mortem has been conducted by a medical board. A case will be registered in the matter after further investigation," The father, Mahendra Meena said, "I was admitted to the hospital on Monday. Dogs were coming inside the ward and I chased them away. My wife woke up at 2 am and found the dogs mauling our child. Today, the hospital authorities and police took the signature of my wife on blank papers and got the last rites of my son done without informing me. I could not even see my son's face.” However the hospital authorities said, “The patient's attendant was sleeping and the hospital guard was attending to the other ward. Investigation is going on and the authorities cannot say anything now. Condemning the incident, BJP leader Narayan Purohit said the hospital officials should be held accountable for the tragedy. BJP workers also met the aggrieved family members and held a sit-in demanding compensation and submitted their letter to the district administration officials to take strict action in the matter.
The incident has made people think Who is accountable? What makes stray dogs so violent and aggressive? What can be done to contain the menace? Seeing these incidents, many people commented that a free-roaming (stray) dog is always a threat, more so to small children who can't defend themselves. Either that or remove all stray dogs from residential areas, and put them in a segregated uninhabited area where dog lovers can go and feed or care for them? However, animal rights experts argue that the aggression of community dogs comes from their natural sense to defend themselves, their litter, or their territory, and hunger. The only long-term solution to the issue is sterilization and vaccination. They added that, "All municipal bodies are well responsible for regularly taking up sterilizing and vaccinating dogs but it doesn't happen. It is not the dog’s fault. They also said that the public must feed them like humans. Hunger can drive a dog to steal food or try and get food by force. Well-fed dogs are socialized and respond with love to the kindness shown to them.
