News @ AsiaOne
Animal activists hail ruling
Court ruling prevents killing of stray dogs in Mumbai, thanks to Former 'Baywatch' star. -AFP
Sat, Jan 24, 2009
MUMBAI - ANIMAL rights campaigners on Saturday welcomed an Indian Supreme Court ruling preventing the killing of stray dogs in Mumbai, which prompted a high-profile intervention from US actress Pamela Anderson.
'It's fabulous news,' Anuradha Sawhney, a spokeswoman for activist group the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in Mumbai, told AFP.
Former 'Baywatch' star Anderson backed Peta's opposition to a recent Bombay High Court ruling that nuisance strays could be put down and appealed to the municipal authorities to think again.
She argued that killing street dogs was not the way to solve the problem.
Instead she called for sterilisation programmes to be stepped up, including for those animals bought or adopted from shelters or pet shops.
'Dogs cannot use condoms, but with the municipality's help, they can be 'fixed' - painlessly, quickly and permanently,' she wrote in a letter to city council bosses.
India's Supreme Court ruled on the matter on Friday, saying a dog can only be put down if it is rabid, mortally wounded or incurably ill.
'A dog cannot be exterminated because it barks,' senior lawyer Fali S. Nariman told the court, according to the Press Trust of India news agency, adding that the authorities said they would abide by the ruling.
Mr Sawhney hailed the court's decision, but said it was not enough just to have a sterilisation programme for stray dogs, which are thought to number about 70,000 in India's financial and entertainment capital.
Civic waste management services also have to be improved as strays feed off easily-accessible garbage in the streets, she added.
Asked whether Anderson's involvement may have helped their case, she added: 'Maybe. It makes people realise that a lot of people do care about these animals.
'I think the main thing here is that we need to make people realise how important these dogs are and there's really nothing demeaning in having a stray dog. They're just another dog,' she said.
