User talk:Mudasir Wangnoo

MUDASIR WANGNOO
Mudasir Ahmad Wangnoo, a 12-year-old student, is one of the latest victims.

One evening in January, he was attacked by almost two dozen stray dogs, biting him nearly 125 times.

The dogs injured his neck, face and windpipe. Doctors found perforations caused by the bites in his heart that caused pneumopericardium- a medical condition in which air enters the heart.

Mudasir Ahmad Wangnoo image captionMudasir Ahmad Wangnoo was attacked by two dozen stray dogs Syed Sajad Hussain, 40, who rescued Mudasir from the dogs, said the attack was "extremely terrible".

"The incident was similar to one you must have seen on Animal Planet - dozens of hyenas kill a helpless beast," he said.

Fortunately Mudasir survived the attack, but others such as four-year-old Sehrab Wagay of south Kashmir's Pulwama, succumbed to rabies last August after being bitten by feral dogs.

"The danger is real," warns Dr Saleem-ur-Rehman, Director of the Health Department. "On our side we are quick at providing anti-rabies drugs to hospitals and anti-rabies clinics but municipal authorities must act."

A count by the municipality found more than 90,000 stray dogs in Srinagar city. There has been no survey in the rest of the region, where dog bite cases outnumber those in Srinagar.

Unofficial estimates and local NGOs put the number of dogs in the valley at more than a million, triggering fears of increasing dog-man conflict in the next few years if the dog population is not checked.

Recently, people in the city staged a protest demanding a cull of stray dogs.

Noted poet Zareef Ahmad Zareef, who led the protest march, told the BBC that after years of "failure", the government had very little time to act now.

"We have given the authorities a deadline of a few weeks to end the canine menace. Once it finishes the civil society will handle it of its own," says Mr Zareef, whose brother had to be given 40 anti-rabies injections after being attacked by stray dogs.

"The government and animal right activists feel we are subhumans."

Caught between animal rights activists, who believe that the stray dogs should be sterilised, and irate residents, who want the dogs to be killed, the city's municipality has been grasping for a solution Mudasir Wangnoo (talk) 22:02, 20 January 2021 (UTC)