A 79-years old woman was mauled to death by stray dogs in the Rantaksha village of Zanskar in the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh on Saturday. Officials identified the deceased as Tsering Kunzess who was living alone in her house.

Residents of the village said that feral dogs attacked the woman between 7 to 8 am and killed her near her house in the Kargil district.

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SDM and SHO of police station rushed to the spot and shifted her body to a hospital at Padum for conducting post-mortem. The SDM, Zanskar, announced logistic support for the cremation of the deceased.

Anger is brewing among residents of Ladakh as attacks by feral dogs on humans and wildlife are increasing by the day. What is an alarming factor in the attacks is that stray dogs are being crossbred with wolves, reports claim.

Sometime ago when a woman was killed by a herd of feral dogs, people, reacting to the incident reportedly threw several dogs in the Indus river.

The issue of feral dogs has been discussed at the level of Lt. Governor of Ladakh but there has been no letup in the growth of their population although the authorities have initiated a sterilisation drive to control the population of wild dogs.

Incidents of dog bite are also increasing fast in the UT of Ladakh where 232 cases were recorded in 38 days till the first week of February in the Leh hospital.

According to Dr. Nurzin Angmo, chief medical officer, Leh, a total of 2,000 dog-bite cases were registered at the Leh hospital in 2022. The number of such incidents in the Kargil district was not available.

Dr. Tsewang Dorjey, technical officer, Department of Animal and Sheep Husbandry, said a total of 22,145 stray dogs have been sterilised since 2013.

Feral dogs have also become a threat to rare local and migratory ground-nesting birds, particularly in the Changthang area. Inability to tackle this problem may lead to severe endangering of critical bird and mammalian species.