Sugandha, April 20, 2012

Five dogs have been arrested for allegedly gang-biting a 23-year-old man who was returning home after a full day’s work in a Gurgaon pub.

The man, Raju, is the sole earning member of his family. He had taken up the job of a waiter at a pub in the Besahara Mall in spite of much resistance from his mother who was really concerned about his safety. “But I was not getting work anywhere else in the city. With no other option at hand, I decided to go for this,” Raju tells us writhing in pain.

On the unfortunate night of April 15, his mother’s fears came true and Raju was spotted by five wild dogs who had been roaming around on the roads freely. Raju came out of the mall at 1 am and started walking towards a spot just 1 km away, where his friend was going to pick him up.

Raju described his ordeal: “I didn’t even realize that they had been quietly following me, and when I did, I really got scared and started walking faster. The dogs’ paw-steps became faster too. They passed lewd barks at me, which were getting louder with each step. I felt helpless. There was not a speck of life in sight, only the dogs, their ugly barks and I alone on the deserted road. Before I could think of what to do, they were eating into my legs and tearing apart every morsel of flesh on them with such vigour that I went numb.”

Raju’s medical examination has revealed that his body was mercilessly assaulted by the dogs one-by-one for over two hours. “They took turns on me,” he said. While I was experiencing the worst pain of my life, bleeding profusely and moaning painfully, they seemed to be enjoying it. They called me names, laughed aloud, dug their teeth everywhere on my body so hard that I died a million times in those two hours.”

Doctors say that Raju will not be able to walk properly again and that “more than the body pain, it is the mental and moral hurt that will not go”. He has already attempted suicide thrice. He says: “I will never be able to step out of the house again. And these nightmares just wouldn’t stop. I can still see, right in front of my eyes, those dogs sitting on me and happily chewing every little lump of flesh they could get their dirty paws on. I can’t get rid of these pictures, please help me die.”

The Gurgaon police have said that they or the dogs are not the only ones to be blamed. “If a guy exposes his body by wearing revealing clothes, and is out of home on such roads so late in the night, due to whatever reasons, what will the poor dogs do?” the police said. “Any flesh-eating animal can get aroused in such a situation. We are looking into the matter, but please don’t blame us.”

The police chief said: “In most such cases, there is some sort of consent from the so-called ‘victim’ too. If Raju was wearing such provocative clothes, he obviously knew what the consequences could be. How do we know his intentions weren’t wrong? What if he had himself invited the dogs to bite him? What if he belongs to a characterless family background? Decent people don’t do such things. These are some of the crucial details we are looking into.”