The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Kerala government to take action against groups indiscriminately culling stray dogs in the state and distributing subsidised airguns to kill the animals. However, the Justice Dipak Misra-led bench said they should not create an impression that human life matters less than a canine’s and allowed the government to cull the animals under specific rules, Hindustan Times reported.

The bench was referring to the four people killed in stray dog attacks in Kerala in as many months. It also directed the state government to take action against groups formed to train children to cull the canines.

“We restrain such organisations from imparting training to children or distributing subsidised airguns for people to kill stray dogs,” the bench said. It also asked for curbs on public propaganda about “a war against stray dogs”, on strangulating them and offering incentives to those who kill the most homeless dogs.

The Old Students’ Welfare Association of St Thomas College in Pala, Kerala, had announced that civic authorities that kill the most stray dogs by December 10 will be rewarded gold coins. A state-based industrialist had also announced rewards for culling dogs in Kerala.

Animal rights activists have accused the state government of not stopping the culling despite a Supreme Court directive on the atrocity. “People are strangulating puppies, lactating female dogs, and the government is neither opposing it, nor stopping it,” said Sally Kannan, an honorary animal welfare officer at the Animal Welfare Board of India.

Kannan also accused social worker Jose Maveli of openly asking people to kill strays. Maveli has been arrested in a number of cases related to mass cullings and has been asked to appear before the top court on March 1, the date of the next hearing in the matter.

On October 4, the Supreme Court had asked the state’s chief secretary to file an action taken report in the matter. A bench of the court had also directed the state to ensure that no further culling took place in Kerala.

The news follows the death of four persons attacked by dogs in the past four months and reports of around 700 people injured in similar cases.