Two of the five dogs owned by mafia-politician and former MP Atiq Ahmad have died, allegedly due to starvation, in their enclosure in the lawn of Atiq’s ancestral home in Chakia locality in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj.
While a female dog Bruno died on Friday, another male dog breathed his last on Saturday.
The district administration has now sent a team of veterinary doctors who have checked the health of the remaining three dogs and have started the required treatment.
The Animal Welfare department of the Prayagraj Municipal Corporation (PMC) has also started taking care of the three remaining canines.
The condition of the other three dogs was also deteriorating due to lack of food, water and proper care.
Atiq’s wife Shaista was living allegedly on rent when their house was demolished on March 1.
The dogs, locals said, were starving since then, surviving on scraps of food that they could find or that some locals offered them. They seemed to be Great Danes, locals said.
The dogs were being taken care of by Atiq’s family which was living in a house nearby.
However, after Umesh Pal murder on February 24, one of Atiq’s sons Asad and wife Shaista Parveen are on the run and two minor sons are in juvenile home.
With Atiq, two of the eldest sons Umar and Ali Ahmad are already in different jails, no one in the family is left to take care of the dogs.
Moreover, the neighbours also stopped giving food to the dogs because of fear of the police.
“After the Umesh Pal murder, everyone around here is on police radar. Their servants have either been detained or have run away. Anyone who gave food to the dogs was also being questioned for ‘links’ with Atiq Ahmad. Naturally, everyone started keeping a distance and the dogs went without food for several days,” said a local resident on condition of anonymity.
