Marathoners among those bitten as Nainital battles stray dogs

The event, which had 80 participants, also ended abruptly for Arun Adhikari, 18, who too was bitten by a dog and was taken to a hospital along with Mehra. Yet another participant, Pramod Patni, complained that he was attacked by a monkey.

“The marathon has been organised for eight consecutive years but this is the first time I have seen such an incident,” said Harish Tewari, the organiser. “The dog menace is already tourists and local residents, and now athletes too have become victims… The local administration must tackle the problem.”

The Nainital Municipal Corporation says it has sterilised 826 stray dogs in the last five months and is continuing the programme. Matters came to a head in July after a 10-year-old girl from Rajasthan, chased by a stray dog, fell into a ditch and died. This led to protests by Nainital residents demanding action by the town administration.

“We have sterilised 826 stray dogs in the 11 sq km area that is covered by the municipal corporation,” said Rohitash Sharma, executive officer of the Nainital Municipal Corporation. “The survey for stray dogs is going on and the sterilisation programme continues to keep the population of stray dogs in check.”

Across Nainital district, 1,185 cases of dog bites have been reported between June and August, according to data with the district administration. additional district magistrate Harbeer Singh said, however, that not all these attacks were by stray dogs.

“In the last two weeks of August, 138 cases of dog bites and monkey bites have been reported. Of these, 93 people were bitten by domestic dogs, four by monkeys and the rest by stray dogs,” the additional district magistrate said. “It goes to prove that the menace is more because of domestic dogs, so the administration cannot be solely blamed for it.”

According to data for all Uttarakhand, the state had 49,000 cases of dogs biting humans and 7,000 of dogs biting other animals in 2014-15. At least five petitions on the stray dog menace and the monkey menace are pending in Uttarakhand High Court.

The government has a population management programme for 3 lakh stray dogs across the state but it is currently restricted to only Mussoorie, Nainital and Dehradun due to lack of funds, said Ashutosh Joshi, member secretary of the state Animal Birth Control monitoring committee.

“The first phase of the ABC-ARV (Animal Birth Control-Anti Rabies Vaccination) programme started in Uttarakhand in November 2016, and it covers only Mussoorie, Nainital and Dehradun. The municipal corporations of Haridwar, Roorkee, Rudrapur, Kashipur and Haldwani will be included in the second phase of the programme,” Joshi said.

While stray dogs have become a problem recently in Nainital, monkeys have been a threat to residents for over two decades now.

In 2016, 635 monkeys were caught from areas in the Nainital forest division where their population was high. They were released either in the jungles of Mahesh Khan 20 km from Nainital town, or in the Kilbury jungles 10 km away, said Dharam Singh, divisional forest officer of Nainital.

In the Garhwal region, a monkey sterilisation programme is going on in Haridwar, where 480 monkeys have been sterilised since 2015. However, the programme has not taken off in the Kumaon region, where a monkey sterilisation centre, under construction in Ranibagh, 38 km from Nainital town, is waiting for funds.

To control the monkey population across the state, which a 2015 census puts at 1.46 lakh, the forest department is considering giving them oral contraceptives.

“We either catch the monkeys from one area and release them in another to deal with the menace, or we sterilise them. However, use of oral contraceptives for birth control in monkeys is another method that we are working towards,” said Digvijay Singh Khati, Uttarakhand chief wildlife warden.