BENGALURU: The newly-established Bengaluru North City Corporation (BNCC) dog-shelter has been caught in the eye of the storm again. Activists and community feeders within the corporation’s bounds have reported that dogs are allegedly being caught and dumped to the shelter from residential neighbourhoods as well, violating the Supreme Court direction that limits municipal authorities to picking up stray dogs from institutional places – like hospitals and educational campuses – only.
A few days earlier, a report found the shelter to have been dumping the sheltered dogs’ fecal matter into a septic tank, violating several norms set by the Supreme Court, Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) and Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB). The shelter, which was built at a cost of roughly Rs 1.8 crores, has a maximum occupancy limit of 500 dogs.
“They have been allowing dogs to be picked up from anywhere to be dumped to the shelter, because the agency assigned for the pickup duties is monetarily incentivised to fill the shelter as much as possible. The shelter personnel do not let us ask about the dogs’ origins,” said Sadhana Hegde, the founder of Sahavarthin Animal Welfare Trust.
According to Hegde, welfare workers are being left in the dark about the dogs’ health as well; when volunteers went to check on the dogs’ conditions following the recent spate of heavy downpour in the city, they were allegedly prohibited from inquiring. On Tuesday, workers managed to gain access inside the compound, only to find the dogs severely malnourished, revealing their exoskeletons prominently through their skins.