Copyright news18
Authorities at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) in Mumbai were thrown into chaos early Sunday morning after a stray dog managed to sneak into the airside area, running amok for nearly two hours. However, flight operations were not interrupted and the canine was chased away following a strenuous exercise, officials said. The incident was reported early morning. Officials aware of the event told News18 that the dog was spotted at the airside close to the perimeter wall around 7:50 am. After this, an alert was sent to departments concerned to contain the situation. For the next two hours, multiple teams from the security department, airside operations, and airport operators chased the dog, which was also spotted close to the runway, at least twice, when the runway was in operation. It was only around 9:40 am that the dog was finally chased out of the perimeter wall of the airport. An official from the airport, however, denied the dog reaching close to the runway but confirmed the incident. The official told News18 that if the dog had come onto the runway it would require an SoP to be enacted that requires brief shutting down of runway operations. “This was not called for which implies that the dog must have not come over the runway,” the officer said, accepting, “Yes, the dog had entered the airside and was chased out successfully.” Another officer told News18 that the dog had entered from gate number two on the cargo side. “This gate is close to a garbage dumping site which attracts canines and other strays. This site close to the airport needs to be done away with as it makes such intrusions a recurring concern,” the official said. The Mumbai airport, however, is not the only one where the issue with stray dogs has been raised. Recently, there were multiple reports from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport of stray dogs swarming terminal areas to food courts. In a recent social media post, BJP leader Vijay Goel also highlighted the issue urging authorities to act. Goel wrote on Facebook, “there are dogs everywhere near T3 of Delhi airport…they bark at travellers…loiter around food stalls near the metro station gates and around escalators…such a sight at busiest airports is worrying,” he wrote in Hindi. The country’s apex court is also scheduled to hear a suo motu case relating to stray dogs on Monday after it had expanded the scope of the stray dogs case beyond the confines of Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) and directed that all states and Union Territories be made parties in the matter on August 22. In this order, the Supreme Court had modified its earlier direction prohibiting the release of vaccinated stray dogs from pounds in Delhi-NCR, calling it “too harsh” and ordered the canines to be released post sterilisation and de-worming.
