A two-year-old girl, who was cornered by three to four dogs and received 30 to 40 bites, succumbed to her injuries at a government hospital in Surat on Thursday.

Her father, Ravikumar Kahar, said that he and his wife are daily wage earners and live in a labour colony near Diamond Bourse in Khajod area. When the couple were on work on Sunday, he received word that dogs had bitten his two-year-old daughter, returned home, and rushed her to the government hospital.

When the girl was brought in, she had 30 to 40 dog bite marks on her head, arms, and legs - even near her lungs and on her back, and some wounds were quite deep, doctors said. Doctors had carried out a minor operation on the girl and she was recovering after three days of treatment, but succumbed, hospital's resident medical officer, Dr Ketan Nayak said.

The Surat Municipal Corporation has hired a non-government hospital for sterlisation of dogs and daily 30 dogs are sterilised, the dog population in the city is 20,000, and the corporation is doing all that it can do to control the dog menace, Mayor Hemaliben Boghawala said.

(SJ/IANS)