No, the Indian Army does not kill its dogs after retirement

Screenshot of the fake post that was shared widely

Indian Army spokesperson says only animals suffering from terminal and incurable diseases are euthanised.

New Delhi: A blog post claiming that the Indian Army continues to kill its dogs on retirement is doing the rounds on social media.

The article, published on a lesser-known portal, talescart.com, says that the Army continues with the colonial practice of putting its trained mutts to sleep. However, Army sources told ThePrint that it’s a false claim.

“The army has stopped euthanising (mercy-killing) the animals after the government sanction in 2015,” said Col. Aman Anand, spokesperson of the Indian Army.

“Only animals suffering from terminal and incurable diseases are being euthanised, the number of which is very low,” Anand clarified.

The misleading article was shared widely on Facebook. ‘Warning: Do not like this page, you will die of laughter’ and ‘Be Like Bro’ — two FB pages with 6 million and 10 million likes, respectively — shared this write-up Wednesday, which has received around 5,000 reacts and more than 200 shares on social media.

The article cites two reasons to justify the claim — that the dogs are familiar with the Indian Army base areas and can cause trouble if they land in wrong hands after retirement. The second reason is that the animal welfare agencies are unable to provide the dogs with the same kind of facilities that the Indian Army provides and thus the Army is left with no choice but to kill them.

The Indian Army, however, rejected this argument.

Anand said that aging dogs are taken care of by the Indian Army’s retirement homes meant for its animals.

“The Indian Army sends the retired animals to old-age homes it maintains in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh (for dogs), and Hempur in Uttarakhand (for horses)”, Anand added.