Put Humans First: End the Stray Dog Menace
Subin Dennis
A SUPREME Court directive on August 11, 2025 to remove stray dogs from the streets of Delhi-NCR has brought an issue that causes immense suffering to people across India to the spotlight. The stray dog menace causes millions of dog bites in India every year, resulting in injuries, disabilities, trauma, and death to untold numbers of people. Although a larger bench of the Supreme Court has subsequently modified the August 11th directive, the judicial intervention has created an environment where effective solutions to the stray dog menace can be discussed widely. This is also an opportune time to bring to wider public attention the need for a scientific approach to the management of animal populations in general, given the heightened concern about the human-wildlife conflict in many parts of India resulting in the loss of many human lives and livestock.
According to government data, there were 37 lakh (3.7 million) cases of dog bites in India in 2024. Estimates of the number of deaths due to rabies vary, from 5,700 per year according to a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal in January 2025, to the figure of 18,000-20,000 per year quoted by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Of course, rabies deaths are not the only problem. Attacks by dogs without rabies can also be life-threatening; dog bites are painful and can cause serious injuries and disabilities. Children, the elderly, and the disabled are particularly vulnerable to stray dog attacks.
POOR & LOWER MIDDLE CLASS BEAR THE BRUNT
An examination of news reports about stray dog attacks in India shows that the vast majority of people who have died as a result of such attacks belong to the poor and lower middle-class sections. They constitute the vast majority of the population of our country; they are the ones who walk more to workplaces, bus stops, markets, and so on. They are the ones whose houses are less likely to have walls that keep stray dogs out to a certain extent.
Four-year-old Khadeera Banu, daughter of a street vendor father and a homemaker mother in Bangalore, died of rabies after being bitten on her face and other body parts by a stray dog while playing outside her house. 62-year-old Munni Devi was killed in Bijnor district, Uttar Pradesh by a pack of dogs that attacked her while she was weeding a paddy field. A national level para-athlete, 33-year old Jogendra Chhatria, and 48-year-old farmer Hrushikesh Rana died after being bitten by a rabid dog in Bolangir, Odisha. Seven-year-old Niya died after battling rabies for a month after being bitten by a stray dog in Kollam, Kerala – she died despite having received immunoglobulin serum and three doses of anti-rabies vaccine. These are just a few examples of people who were killed by stray dogs in India in recent months.
Even in the face of such horrific incidents, many stray dog advocates blame the victims, claiming that stray dogs don't attack human beings without being "provoked". But the availability of CCTV footage of numerous cases of stray dog attacks in recent years has been a game-changer. The videos clearly show people being attacked by stray dogs with absolutely no provocation. Horrifying visuals of children being brutally mauled by packs of stray dogs have shaken the conscience of even those who had hitherto been indifferent to the plight of stray dog attack victims.
THREAT TO OTHER SPECIES
Stray dogs attack not just human beings, but also other species. Musk deer (an endangered species), blackbuck (a near-threatened species), red panda (an endangered species), the Great Indian Bustard (a critically endangered species), and the Black-necked Crane (a near-threatened species) are among the wildlife species that are threatened by stray dogs in India. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says that dogs pose a threat to at least 191 species that are in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Attacks by stray dogs on livestock have led to vociferous protests by farmers in various parts of India. For instance, farmers in the Tirupur and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu report that more than 2,000 livestock have died in the two districts last year due to dog attacks. In protest, 27 gram sabhas in Tirupur district have passed resolutions and hoisted black flags in all the villages against the dog menace.
As per the union government's Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, stray dogs that are captured from an area for sterilisation and immunisation will have to be released in the same area afterwards. These rules, first issued in 2001, led to the worsening of the stray dog menace, as it prevented local bodies from euthanising stray dogs. Sterilisation and immunisation do not prevent dog bites, and stray dog attacks on human beings have continued. Moreover, since a significant number of stray dogs are not captured at all, the unsterilised dogs breed quickly and the stray dog population continues to remain high, if not even higher than earlier numbers.
The ABC Rules also say that resident welfare associations should feed stray dogs. When dogs get food regularly in an area, they get territorial (they begin to consider the territory as their own), and become aggressive towards those who pass through the area. Feeding stray dogs also creates an environment that is conducive for the population of stray dogs to increase further.
We need to have a scientific approach, not a sentimentalist approach, to the management of animal populations. In many advanced countries, unowned dogs are moved to shelters, put up for adoption, and the ones that are not adopted after a specified time period are euthanised. Policymakers in such countries also recognise that the numbers of some animals will increase naturally from time to time so much that it harms the ecosystem, and that in such circumstances, direct measures will have to be taken to reduce the animal population quickly. For instance, when the kangaroo population increases, it eats up so much vegetation that it becomes harmful to the environment. Therefore, in Australia, kangaroos are regularly culled. In Ireland, deer are culled for similar reasons. 78,000 wild deer were culled in Ireland in 2022-23.
But in India, dogs are allowed to run wild, attacking human beings, livestock, and other species. The prevailing approach to other wild animals is also similar. The peasant movement and the agricultural workers' movement in India have been fighting to persuade the government to change this harmful policy stance. The All India Kisan Sabha and the All India Agricultural Workers Union are on a warpath to protect human life, property and livelihoods from wildlife attacks. They are demanding that the Indian Forest Act, 1927, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 be amended for this purpose, and that state governments should be allowed to declare certain species (such as wild boar in Kerala) as vermin, allowing for scientific culling.
HUMAN SAFETY IS PARAMOUNT
Feeding stray dogs and letting them remain on the streets at great cost to human beings, other species, and to the dogs themselves is not "compassion". Allowing stray dogs to attack, injure and kill human beings is not "humane". Placing the lives of stray dogs above human lives and that of other species is not scientific.
To end the stray dog menace, a framework that promotes responsible pet ownership and that aims to keep our streets free of stray dogs needs to be adopted. Feeding dogs in public places must be prohibited. Stray dogs have to be removed to pounds, neutered and vaccinated, and put up for adoption. Those that are not adopted after a specified period of time should be euthanised.
The August 22 order of the Supreme Court stayed the removal of stray dogs from the streets of Delhi-NCR that the August 11th directive mandated. But the new order prohibits the feeding of stray dogs in streets and public places, which is a move in the right direction. It has also extended the scope of the matter to the entire country, and made all state and union territory governments parties to the case.
A policy approach that puts human lives and livelihoods first, and reforming the legal framework, particularly the ABC Rules, based on such an approach are urgently required.
