The Madras High Court on Wednesday questioned the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) for turning a blind eye towards cattle owners letting their cows and buffaloes roam around on public roads even during peak traffic thereby causing great danger to the motorists as well as the animals. The judges wanted the civic body to keep the roads clear of the cattle.
First Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy expressed their displeasure over the issue. The ACJ said that he could witness the cattle disrupting traffic even on Kamarajar Salai which runs parallel to the Marina beach. He wondered how could the Corporation let such things happen on such a busy road in the city.
The observations were made during the hearing of a case related to stray dogs inside Indian Institute of Technology- Madras (IIT-M) campus. Justice S. Vaidyanathan of the High Court had last week written a letter to the ACJ and shared a video clip of a cow having suffered bleeding injuries on its udders when Corporation staff at Alandur forced it to enter into a heavy vehicle.
Referring to the video clip, the ACJ told the court that it was only after he took note of the issue on the administrative side, the cow was taken to a veterinary hospital for treatment.
GCC counsel Karthika Ashok agreed and said that she had planned to visit the cow at the hospital this Saturday.
In so far as the issue related to stray dogs was concerned, the court had already decided to enlarge the scope of the case and try to fix responsibility on the owners of pet dogs too with respect to the latter’s behaviour in public places.
Senior Counsel Satish Parasaran told the court that he had received suggestions from animal lovers such as advocate Naveen Kumar Murthy and S. Muralidharan and that he would compile all of them.
The senior counsel also said that there appeared to be some Supreme Court orders too on the issue. Therefore, the judges decided to hear the matter in physical mode and adjourned it by two weeks.
