KATHMANDU, July 27: The Patan High Court has issued an interim order following initial hearings on a writ petition filed against the ward chairman of Kathmandu Metropolitan City-30, Dal Bahadur Karki, who threatened to kill all community dogs in his ward. The petition was filed by animal rights activist Sneha Shrestha and her team. Shrestha is the president of the Federation of Animal Welfare Nepal and founder of Sneha’s Care, a shelter for sick and injured street animals.
Shrestha told Republica that she is satisfied with the court's interim order. “Making statements such as killing community dogs is wrong. He is a ward chairman of KMC. So, instead of making such inhumane statements, he should try to find some alternatives such as building dog shelters, organizing vaccination campaigns etc. Killing dogs is not the solution, ” said Shrestha.
She added that as per the Muluki Ain (General Code), killing a dog is a criminal offense and a person can be jailed for upto six months and fined Rs 5000 to 10,000 for killing a canine.
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She filed the case against KMC-30 Ward Chairman Karki on July 20 and the court issued the interim order on July 26. The court order clearly mentions that no one is allowed to kill community dogs and that they should be managed.
“There are more than 10,000 community dogs in Lalitpur district alone. We conduct a dog census every year,” she said.
On July 17, Ward Chairman Karki made a controversial statement saying that he had already killed dogs and would go ahead with his plan to poison more stray dogs in his ward.
“For now, the high court has issued an interim order against the ward chairman Karki’s plan to kill dogs. I hope the court’s final verdict, too, would be in favor of the innocent animals,” said Shrestha.
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