Stray dogs case: Supreme Court say will impose heavy compensation on states for every dog bite death

A bench of Supreme Court Justices comprising Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and NV Anjaria heard the case of street dogs in India on Tuesday and said heavy compensation will be imposed on states for every dog bite death.

The apex court asked all state governments, saying they “failed miserably” to implement the ABC Rules. “We are going to take the Union government and state governments to task. The issue has been ongoing forever. You yourself have mentioned that parliament has been looking into it since the 1950s. It is because of the Union and state governments that the problem has multiplied 1000 times. Complete failure on the part of the Union and state governments. For every man, woman and child who has lost their lives to a dog bite, we will impose heavy compensation on the government responsible,” the bench said.

The Suprme Court bench in the last hearing on January 8 highlighted the lack of proper implementation of ABC rules while also schooling dog lovers, including the counsel of actor Sharmila Tagore, who is one of the petitioners, of being “far from reality”.

Last week, the Supreme Court said it would not go into the allegations of harassment of women dog feeders and caregivers by purported anti-feeder vigilantes since it was a law and order issue and the aggrieved persons could lodge FIRs about it.

Hearing arguments in the stray dogs case, the apex court also refused to go into the claims about certain derogatory remarks being made about women in the issue.

A three-judge special bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N V Anjaria observed that some of the arguments made before it were “far from reality” and there were a number of videos of stray dogs attacking children and the elderly.