A compromise agreement was recently reached between the dogs’ owner and the victim who was attacked by two dogs in Karachi. One of the conditions of the agreement was that the dogs would be put down and a donation worth Rs1 million be made to the Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation (ACF), an animal rescue shelter.
When the news came out, ACF Animal Rescue received a lot of backlash for accepting the donation. ACF has now decided to return the money.
An agreement was reached between the victim, Mirza Akhtar Ali, and the dogs’ owner, Humayun Ali Khan.
“The two dogs involved in the incident will be euthanised/put down by a veterinarian immediately. Any other such dogs that Humayun Khan has, he shall give them away,” stated one of the conditions of the agreement.
The agreement included a clause that Humayun will donate Rs1 million to a local animal shelter, ACF Animal Rescue.
Social media users started blaming the ACF for some alleged role in the decision to put the dogs down. ACF announced on Monday that it would be returning the money.
It also said legal action will be taken for defamation and harassment of Ayesha Chundrigar and staff members.
Earlier, the foundation had shared a letter from Taimur Ali Mirza, the son of the victim, clarifying that ACF was not aware of the details of the donation.
“There are always two stances towards dog attacks all over the world-try to retrain or euthanise. These are international ethical practices. Kindly research yourselves,” the foundation wrote in its caption.
“As you are aware, my father Mirza Akhtar Ali was mauled and attacked by two dogs belonging to Mr Humayun Khan on the morning of 16th June 2021,” read the letter, adding that the “attack was brutal and my father suffered serious life-threatening injuries. It was by the grace of Allah that he survived the vicious attack”.
The victim had suffered “serious toll on his mental and physical wellbeing” as he has to go thorugh a five hours of emergency surgery at Ziauddin Hospital.
“The above is not the only suffering we face. While there has been an outpouring of love, we have received and continue to receive abuse and trolling online on social media. People have written vile things about my father on social media and shown sadistic pleasure on him being attacked and suffering the injuries he has. Death has been wished upon him. We have, however, now responded to any abuse or hate directed towards him nor have we spoken ill about Mr Humayun Khan or his family,” wrote Mirza.
He further wrote that they found little help building a case against the dog owner. “However, during my investigation, it was discovered that the dogs that had mauled my father had previously attacked and mauled a number of other people. The attack on my father was thus not a one-off attack but a pre-existing behavioural issue of the dogs,” he said.
Mirza said they got to know later that the locals of the area where the dogs were kept had signed a petition asking the CBC to remove the dogs from the neighbourhood.
He also said that his father decided to forgive the dogs’ owner who had “approached me through a number of people asking [for] my father’s forgiveness and had shown remorse for what had happened. He had repeatedly offered to euthanise the dogs in a bid to ensure that what happened to my father did not happen to anyone else.”
A number of people offered to adopt the dogs but were unable to give any assurance that they would be able to prevent the dogs from harming anyone else in the future, read the letter. “There are some who feel euthanising the dogs is unreasonable, however, the dogs being a risk to the lives of others was a risk no one should have to or was willing to bear. It was a risk too great to be left unmitigated. It is a tragic situation and unfortunately, there are no winners here. Taking a simplistic view of the entire circumstances is an easy thing to do but it is unfair,” he said.
“I would also like to clear any ambiguity as regards to what gave rise to the donation of Rs1,000,000 to ACF Animal Rescue. The donation was decided to be given to ACF Animal Rescue without consulting or informing you,” Mirza said.
“The first time you came to know of the donation was when I messaged you to inform you that such a donation had been made to your organisation. The simple reason for the donation is to help those animals which are in need and distressed. It is something which felt right to do in the present circumstances.”
He addressed that people are criticising ACF and incorrectly blaming the organisation for recommending to euthanise the dogs and the donation being blood money.
“For the pain and trouble that has been caused to you and your organisation, I truly and humbly apologise. It was never my intention to hinder the good work that your organisation is doing nor tarnish its reputation,” Mirza said.
“I understand that you would be in the right to return the donation and I cannot stop you from doing so. However, I implore you to reconsider and use the donation to help distressed and in need animals so that at least some good can come out of what all has happened.” ACF had initially said that it would use the money as part of its ongoing trap/neuter/vaccinate/relocate-release programme.
In its caption, ACF reasoned that people don’t see all the work done behind the scenes. “We do enough, and it is unfair and absolutely ludicrous to malign us for a battle that wasn’t ours to fight.”
“We obviously condemn negligence when it comes to handling pets carelessly because poor animals always pay the price as written in our previous post. We also condemn the vicious culling of friendly stray dogs as mentioned in the previous post,” wrote ACF.
“It is NOT easy to raise funds in our line of work, let alone on the magnitude that we work that is unheard of here. And frankly, that no one is really understanding, trying to force us to fight every battle. Then hating on us when our regular work suffers,” the post said.
