Malaysia Does Not Have A Pet Extortion Problem, It Has A By-Law Problem And That Is Somehow Worse

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Animal welfare groups are calling it extortion; municipal councils are calling it a lawful compound.

A lawyer says the legal maximum is RM10; the councils are charging up to RM2,000.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, a dog named Rocky was strangled outside his owner’s home in Klang.

Malaysia’s stray animal crisis has a new flashpoint — and it is not about cruelty alone.

It is about whether the rules designed to protect animals are being used to profit from the people trying to save them.

The Fee Nobody Can Agree On

The core accusation is specific.

S. Shashi Kumar, President of the Global Human Rights Federation, alongside a coalition of 25 animal welfare NGOs including Lawyers for Animal Rights, made the allegations during a protest in Klang on Wednesday (5 August), held in response to Rocky’s death.

They allege that local councils are holding captured animals to ransom and demanding fees of between RM1,000 and RM2,000 per dog before rescuers can reclaim them, with deadlines as short as 15 minutes before the animal is euthanised.

Human rights lawyer Rajesh Nagarajan put a number on it: local by-laws, he argues, only legally permit councils to collect around RM10 in administrative fees to cover the basic cost of capture and short-term boarding.

Everything above that, he contends, has no basis in written law.

The councils disagree.

The Councils’ Answer: It Is the Law

Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) and Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ) did not engage with the word extortion at all.

Instead, both councils defended the fees on statutory grounds — pointing to By-Law 3(1), which prescribes a compound of up to RM1,000 for keeping an unlicensed dog, and By-Law 17(1), which prescribes an additional RM1,000 for allowing it to roam freely in public, with both notices issued simultaneously against the same animal.

These are penalties for irresponsible pet ownership, they said, not arbitrary charges.

Shashi, who works in the legal profession and is also a unionist, told TRP that the councils are applying the wrong law entirely.

A rescuer who walks into a pound has committed neither offence, and the by-law has no offender to punish; the council is collecting a penalty from the only person willing to pay it.

The council’s counter, he said, is to argue that feeding a dog constitutes ownership, and that paying the compound to secure its release is treated as further evidence of that ownership — binding the rescuer to the very penalty the by-law was designed to impose on negligent owners.

Under that reasoning, a volunteer who feeds a colony dog on Monday morning can be handed a RM2,000 compound by Monday afternoon, and if they pay to save the dog, the council treats that payment as proof they deserved the fine all along.

Klang Mayor Datuk Abd Hamid Hussain flatly denied that any SOP violations occurred during the 29 July operation, and placed responsibility for Rocky’s death on a physical struggle at the scene.

The Discount That Proved Too Much

MPAJ recently offered what it considered evidence of fairness: it reduced a combined fine from RM5,000 to RM1,250 for an NGO reclaiming five stray dogs at once.

The councils presented this as proof the system is reasonable and flexible.

It is, in fact, the strongest argument the NGOs have.

If these are fixed statutory compounds under published by-laws, they cannot be discretionarily discounted by an officer on the spot.

The moment a RM5,000 bill becomes RM1,250 in a negotiation, it is no longer a fine.

It is a number that was negotiated — with a living animal as the context

The councils handed the activists their best evidence and called it a rebuttal.

Rocky

On the night of 29 July, a joint operation involving 11 MBDK enforcement officers and 50 neighbourhood residents descended on a Klang street following complaints that a stray dog had nearly killed a child.

The council says it followed every SOP; the 13th dog captured was Rocky.

Rocky’s owner, S. Roghini Devi, says she came home to find her dog not in a council catch pole but snared by two men using a transparent cable lined with sharp steel wire — so tight it had to be cut open with heavy cutters.

She says she begged them to stop, offered to pay, was struck on the hand with a wooden stick — and that Rocky was already dead before a single council officer arrived.

The council says her intervention caused the choking.

The Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) and police have classified the case under Section 428 of the Penal Code — animal cruelty- and the investigation papers are with the Deputy Public Prosecutor.

The Selangor Royal Family has condemned it.

Rocky is not coming back, but the by-law is still there.

Parts of the article are based on reports by NST, The Star, Malaysiakini and FMT

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