Angry over their howling, Indian sweet seller poisons 20 dogs to death

The man told the police that he was annoyed with the mess the stray dogs created around his shop

A 24-year-old man has been arrested by the police for poisoning at least 20 dogs in India’s eastern Odisha state, after neighbours alerted them to dog carcasses in a pit in the area.

The sweet seller allegedly told the police that he was annoyed with the howling of dogs during the night and hence decided to poison them.

The incident took place in Sankarpur village in Tangi-Choudwar block, around 13 km north of Cuttack city on Wednesday.

Law enforcement authorities said that the man gave food to stray dogs that was laced with poison over a period of five days.

Residents started noticing dog carcasses dumped in a nearby pit in the neighbourhood and alerted the police.

The man, who was not identified by the police, told authorities that he was also annoyed with the mess the stray dogs used to create around his shop.

Local police said that the man was detained and booked under a law to prevent cruelty against animals.

The dog carcasses were sent for forensic analysis for further investigations, authorities revealed.

This comes a day after shopkeepers in Odisha’s Bhadrak district threw a feast for 500 people in memory of a stray dog named Champi that had become the shopkeepers’ pet.

A fast-food stall owner, Sushant Biswal was quoted in local media as saying that Champi was “like no other dog in the area. I got it from a man 13 years ago. I treated the mongrel as my daughter. It never mingled with other dogs and would prowl around my shop most of the time. At night, it slept inside my shop. It was like a part of my family.”

Users on social media called the sweet seller’s actions “shameful.”

In August this year, activists in Andhra Pradesh in India had claimed that at least 300 stray dogs were allegedly poisoned to death by the local panchayat body and their bodies buried in a pit near Lingapalem village in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.

And back in 2016, more than 700 cases of dog bites were reported in Kerala in south India. In response, some people had started a campaign to kill the dogs. The move had led to widespread anger and disgust from animal rights activists across the country.