A 65-year-old woman was mauled to death by a large pack of stray dogs at the Pulluvila suburban beach near Kanjiramkulam in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
Siluvamma, a resident of the coastal belt, suffered dog bites all over her body and succumbed to injuries while on her way to hospital, according to her family. The dogs also attacked and chased away the local people who tried to rescue her.
Siluvamma’s son, Selvan, who was also attacked by the pack while trying to rescue his mother, escaped by jumping into the sea.
“My mother went to the beach at night. As she did not return, I went out searching for her. What I saw was shocking. She was being attacked by over 100 stray dogs,” Selvan told reporters later.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident, another native of Pulluvila, Daisy, was also attacked and severely injured by stray dogs last night. The 52-year-old, who was rushed to the government medical college here and given anti-rabies injections, said she was attacked by a pack of dogs when she went out of her house around 11.30 p.m. Sources at the hospital said that although she had injuries on her hands and legs, her condition was stable.
She was shifted to the Pulluvila primary healthcare centre for further treatment in the morning, they added.
Stray dogs have been posing a great threat to people, especially women, children and the elderly, in coastal stretches of Kerala, including Pulluvila, for some time.
The issue has been a point of debate in Kerala for the last few years, after an increase in incidents of stray dog attacks, and was also raised in the Assembly earlier this year. According to a report submitted in the Supreme Court recently by a committee appointed by the apex court in a connected case, more than 1 lakh people in Kerala have been bitten by dogs in 2015-16.
The report also said that Kerala is estimated to have a stray dog population of 2.5 lakh, which feed on the waste from garbage dumps across cities and towns. According to the panel, the maximum reported cases of dog bites were from Thiruvananthapuram (5,948), Palakkad (4,916), Kollam (3,670), Pathanamthitta (2,892), Alappuzha (2,967), Ernakulam (2,050), Thrissur (2,044) and Kottayam (1,614).
(Feature image is representational / Source: Pixabay)