“The dog was already dead after our officers had euthanised it. What was shown on TV was a worker dragging a dead dog. It was not strangled or its neck fractured as reported,’’ he said.

On the issue of the burial method, the mayor said the landfill in Bukit Taga refused to take the carcasses so DBKL had to bury the dead dogs inside the pound. But this was done under the Dog Licensing and Canal bylaws

The process involves digging several holes which are about 6ft deep. The hole is layered with lime dust as a disinfectant. Each hole can take in about 60 dogs and the process is repeated months later.

“As bad as it may sound, there is no other way to do this as the cost of having an incinerator is too expensive,” Fuad said.

Under the Dog Licensing and Canal bylaws 1991, stray dogs caught by the DBKL will be kept for seven days before they are put to sleep.

“The cost of catching a dog is RM30 and feeding and euthanising a dog costs RM120.

“The DBKL catches some 8,000 stray dogs a year. Last year alone, over 7,800 dogs were put down at the Setapak dog pound,” Fuad said.

The mayor said if they were to engage a veterinarian to administer the injections, it would cost more. Fuad, however, promised to look into all aspects of the situation and better manage it.

While the mayor acknowledged that whole process should have been better managed, he, however, denied that the dogs were brutally killed at the DBKL dog pound.

“We have been operating the pound for over seven years in collaboration with the SPCA and there has never been such an incident,’’ he said.

The DBKL, in collaboration with the SPCA, had initiated the Klinik Kembiri programme a few years ago whereby cats and dogs are spayed to prevent unwanted stray population. Since 2003, over 8,000 cats and dogs have been spayed.