Two boys seriously injured in separate incidents of attacks by stray dogs in Udaipur, Alwar

Udaipur/Jaipur: Days after the Supreme Court passed a harsh order regarding stray dogs in Delhi-NCR, two minor boys have been injured in two separate incidents of stray dog attacks in Udaipur and Alwar districts of Rajasthan, police said.

A five-year-old boy was injured in a stray dog attack in the Udaipur district of Rajasthan on Sunday evening. The child was mauled by three dogs while he was playing near his home, the police said.

"The boy was playing outside his residence in Gautam Vihar colony when three stray dogs suddenly attacked him. He was injured and taken to a hospital," the police said.

CCTV footage shows the dogs knocking the child to the ground and dragging him before biting him. Hearing the child's screams, his mother rushed out and managed to chase the dogs away, saving him from further harm.

The injured child was immediately taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Following the incident, panic spread across the locality.

Locals have expressed concern over the increasing number of stray dog attacks in the city.

Two months ago, an eight-year-old boy was attacked by a group of stray dogs in another residential colony in Udaipur.

A similar incident happened on Monday in Alwar where an eight-year-old boy was brutally attacked by stray dogs in Sankhla village.

The boy sustained multiple deep wounds across his body, including his neck, face, back, hips, thighs, arms, legs and abdomen, the police said.

According to locals, Yogesh was returning home after playing with friends when eight to ten stray dogs surrounded him, approximately 100 metres from his house.

Villagers, alerted by the boy's screams, rushed to his rescue and managed to drive the dogs away using sticks.

The boy's mother and grandmother said that by the time help arrived, he had sustained severe injuries, with barely any part of his body left unscathed.

The child was immediately rushed to a hospital, where he is undergoing treatment for multiple deep wounds, some of which exposed muscle tissue.

"We saved the boy with great difficulty. The administration must act now to control these stray dogs. This could happen to anyone's child," Ranveer Singh, a relative of the victim, said.

The issue of stray dogs shot into prominence when a bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan on August 11 asked authorities in Delhi-NCR to start relocating all stray dogs from streets to shelters and asked the authorities to initially start by creating a shelter to house 5,000 dogs.

It warned of strictest action against those who obstructed the exercise and directed immediate creation of dog shelters or pounds and a report about it within eight weeks.

The Supreme Court order sparked mixed reactions. While resident welfare associations (RWAs) welcomed the order, animal rights activists including Maneka Gandhi argued that civic bodies lacked the land and funds to carry out the "mammoth" task and warned it could worsen human-dog conflict.

When a plea relating to stray dogs was mentioned for urgent hearing in the Supreme Court, Chief Justice of India B R Gavai assured on Wednesday that he would look into it.

The plea by the Conference for Human Rights (India) was mentioned before a bench of the chief justice and Justice K Vinod Chandran by a lawyer.

After widespread protests across the country following the top court's verdict on relocation of stray dogs in Delhi-NCR, a new three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and N V Anjaria, was constituted to hear the suo motu case. While hearing the matter on Thursday, the three-judge bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath said the "whole problem" of stray dogs in Delhi-NCR was a result of the "inaction" of local authorities which did "nothing" in implementing the Animal Birth Control Rules on sterilisation and immunisation of canines.

The apex court reserved its order on the interim prayer seeking a stay on the August 11 directions passed by the apex court.