Authorities gear up to put animals off Games

To ensure that canines don't enter the Games Village, the civic agencies have decided to plug the loopholes.

To ensure that canines don't enter the Games Village, the civic agencies have decided to plug the loopholes.

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The civic agencies are putting up sandbags, barbed wires and sealing all the gaps in the boundary walls to restrict the dogs from entering the premises.

The move has come after 200 dogs were caught from the Games Village and other stadia in a span of three days.

Though the dogs were being caught by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), they were managing to sneak inside repeatedly due to these openings. The civic bodies had started work on the boundary wall on Sunday itself.

"The boundary wall has been designed in such a manner that there are a number of small gaps in them. The dogs coming from the nearby area were using these gaps to enter the village. We are now putting sandbags, barbed wires and taking other measures to plug these gaps," said a senior MCD official.

Also, to make sure these dogs don't come back to the Village they were being sent to a shelter of Friendicoes SECA (Society for the Eradication of Cruelty to Animals) in Defence Colony from where the animals were being shifted to a sterilisation centre in Ghazipur.

"It is not just the Games Village but other areas such as Chatrasal Stadium, Tyagraj Stadium, Indira Gandhi Stadium, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Hindu College, Ramjas College and other venues too from where dogs are being rounded up," said Gautam Barat, co-founder of Friendicoes.

A number of stray dogs had found holes in the boundary walls of the Games Village.

The Yamuna bank that was once the home of these stray dogs was inundated when the water level started rising more than two weeks ago.

Fearing for their lives the canines rushed towards the Games Village finding holes below the boundary walls as some portion of the concrete had been washed away after being lashed hard by the Yamuna waves for days together.