Ram

What Ram Gopal Varma said

In his note, Ram Gopal Varma wrote, “To all those DUMB DOG LOVERS out there, who think I am a DOG HATER, I say this. Are you so blind, deaf and brain-dead that you can’t see children being bitten, mauled and killed on CCTV videos all over the place? Can’t you f…ing read the official reports on exploding rabies cases? It is common sense that in any emergency—fire, flood, riots, etc, you first deal with the immediate dangers, before holding debates on the root causes and long-term solutions…. The Supreme Court order is not some abstract policy note, but it is a blunt acknowledgement that the stray dog menace has gone extremely too far and human lives have to be saved on a priority level.”

‘Tell the dog lovers to take stray dogs’

He went on to add that there are several dog lovers who treat the dog bites as ‘love bites’. He said, “Coming to adoption, the dog lovers who cry hoarse about compassion are the same people buying foreign breeds to keep them in luxury houses which are well looked after by expensive vets. Just try to tell the dog lovers to take stray dogs in exchange for their pedigree breeds…While feeding, many dog lovers get bitten themselves but don’t report it, treating it as a “love bite.” But rabies spreads silently through these uncontrolled packs, endangering the entire neighbourhood.”

He continued that the stray dog problem in India is real and that to combat this issue, the solutions must balance compassion with practicality, which will depend on both the existing infrastructure and local attitudes.

On August 11, a bench of Justices Pardiwala and R Mahadevan took a stern view of the stray dog problem and ordered the Delhi-NCR to start removing stray dogs from all localities and house them in dedicated dog shelters to be set up by civic authorities. In the last few days, multiple protests have been held in the city over the past few days, demanding that the SC’s order be withdrawn.