Stray Dog Rescues And The Quest To Reunite Them with Caregivers

According to these animal welfare groups, the MCD released all the dogs at random locations on September 11, as there were no records of their actual territories. Activist Gunjan Uppal, who had been monitoring Animal Birth Control (ABC) facilities due to concerns about their treatment of animals, discovered an aged and frail dog named Granny at one of these facilities in Masoodpur. She noted that while some dogs had identification tags, many others had none at all. It took her four days of searching to locate Granny.

Shashank Malhotra, who has been feeding dogs near the airport terminals since 2019, reported that he was searching for nine out of the eighteen missing dogs. Malhotra also raised concerns about the dogs not being properly tagged and mentioned that fifteen to sixteen new dogs had appeared at the cargo terminal. Feeders and animal enthusiasts have turned to social media to coordinate their efforts in locating the missing dogs.

Manni Singh, a dog rescuer, has also been using social media to search for the missing dogs and has even distributed pamphlets promising a reward of Rs 5,000 to chaiwalas (tea vendors) in the area.

Divya Puri, a member of the Karanpuri Foundation, an animal welfare group, highlighted that a total of 31 dogs were missing from Pragati Maidan and Airport terminals. She has forwarded this list to MCD caretakers for their attention.

In contrast, MCD officials have maintained that all the dogs were released at the same location from which they were originally picked up, and they claim that proper tagging was carried out.