Neeshu Shukla
New Delhi (EFE).- Pratima Devi’s work earns her scorn in her community; The elderly woman also known as “the dog lady” feeds some 200 stray animals in south New Delhi, an act that has pitted authorities and animal rights activists amid rising deadly attacks.
The market in the Saket neighborhood, in the south of the capital, is now a disputed territory, humans and dogs try to control the space, drivers avoid the animals on the road and pedestrians avoid spaces where canines are already a majority.
This scene is repeated in much of India, the country with the most abandoned dogs in the world, with some 62 million, according to the Homeless Pet Index (PHI) prepared in 2021 by the North American multinational “Mars Pet”. Care”.
Deadly stray dogs attack children
The death of two brothers, aged 5 and 7 last March, seriously injured in the face, chest and legs by stray dogs, in two different attacks in the south of the Indian capital, have added more fear in the communities.
These were not the first deaths, months before a seven-month-old boy was found with his intestines destroyed after another attack, which accentuated the focus on these ownerless animals that fight for food and territory in the Asian country.
In India, more than 17.4 million attacks take place every year according to the World Health Organization (WHO), of which only 5,500 are reported to the authorities. Added to this are between 18,000 and 20,000 deaths from rabies, 96% of them from the bite of a stray dog.
Faced with uncontrolled reproduction, and legislation that prohibits the slaughter of animals, even if they pose a health risk, feeding dogs on the street has become the center of debate between courts and local governments and animal protectors.
While some animalists defend the care of animals, researchers and experts maintain that reckless and mass feeding concentrates dogs in one place and leads to the formation of groups, and consequently the search for territory dominance.
neighborhood protests
Pratima Devi cares for more than 200 animals, some on metal leashes in her small shelter a few meters from the market, although most roam free, which has earned her the contempt of part of her community.
“I work in the afternoons and it is difficult to pass through here at that time. Several times I have been chased and attacked by packs of dogs. I managed to avoid being bitten, but I’m not sure for how long,” Abhishek Sharma, one of Saket’s residents, told EFE.
With the 80-year-old woman installed in the same place as a provider of food, the animals that own the space “bark at night and prevent us from sleeping peacefully. There is nothing I can do to get them out of here and ensure my safety and that of others,” she added.
An employee of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MDC), Praveen Kumar, who works in the building next to the shelter, assured EFE that the dogs “have caused numerous accidents and bitten many people who visit the market.”
Help from animalists
However, Devi’s work is recognized by many other people who deposit money in a donation box that the old woman has placed outside her shelter, as well as by animal organizations that provide help to feed the dogs, which are not vaccinated. but sterilized, Kumar explained.
Despite the fact that the neighbors have made numerous efforts to get her out of the neighborhood, the last of them last January when the MCD demolished the place where the old woman kept the dogs, her followers managed to obtain a permit for her to remain in the neighborhood accompanied by for his 200 dogs.
With reports of poisoning and beatings of stray dogs on the rise in various cities, especially where the most recent deaths have occurred, “the lady of the dogs” has become the guardian of danger.