Animal rights activists were outraged when India’s Supreme Court issued a dramatic order demanding the removal of all stray dogs from the country’s capital in early August.
Days later, the country’s top court amended that order after a larger bench of judges looked at the case, effectively allowing municipal authorities to return most strays to the neighbourhoods they were picked up from after being sterilised and vaccinated.
However, the court’s interventions have sparked a wider debate in India about dogs on the streets, the threat they pose, and how best to deal with them, despite the revised order’s calmening some of the uprisings that resulted from the initial verdict.
What was the purpose of the court orders, what caused the problem with India’s stray dogs, and how many of these dogs did the country have in the first place?
What was ordered by the Supreme Court?
The Delhi government and local authorities were instructed by Supreme Court Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan on August 11 to immediately begin the removal of stray dogs from all parts of the National Capital Region, including the city of New Delhi and its suburban cities of Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, and Faridabad.
The court’s orders required authorities to “start picking up stray dogs from all localities” and “relocate these dogs into designated shelters/pounds”, with the stipulation that they would not be released back into public spaces again.
Animal rights activists criticized the ruling, arguing that concerns about how the order might lead to acts of cruelty against the dogs were raised by concerns about whether local governments had the necessary infrastructure and resources to carry it out.
Some experts also criticized the Supreme Court’s decision as going against the 2023-enacted Indian Animal Birth Control Rules. Those rules were framed to control stray dog populations humanely, through a policy of capturing, sterilising, vaccinating and then releasing them. However, their entry into Delhi’s streets was prohibited by the August 11 order.
A new three-judge bench eventually heard the case once more on August 22 and changed the previous ruling in response to protests. “The dogs that are picked up shall be sterilised, dewormed, vaccinated, and released back to the same area from which they were picked up”, the court said, staying in line with the birth control rules.
However, the court made it clear that dogs that have rabies, who are suspected of having rabies, and who exhibit aggressive behavior should not be subject to the release after being captured.
Additionally, the court mandated that each municipal ward have dedicated stray dog feeding areas, making it clear that it would no longer be permitted to feed dogs on the streets.
And the court asked other states and federally governed territories to also join the case as parties – in effect, setting the stage for the order, currently restricted to the capital and its surrounding areas, to become a nationwide law.
Is there a problem with dog bites in India?
The Supreme Court took on the case because of concerns over an increasing number of dog bite cases in the country.
In 2022, the nation reported 2, 189, 909 dog bite cases, an increase of 3, 052, 521 cases in 2023, and 3, 715, 713 cases in 2024, according to federal ministry of health data.
Similar to animal bites, dog bites can spread the rabies virus to people. When left untreated, it manifests as either furious or paralytic rabies, both of which are almost always fatal once symptoms develop. Dog bites account for 99% of rabies fatalities in India.
According to federal health ministry data, India has recorded 21, 50, and 54 human fatalities in the last three years, respectively. But experts question those numbers.
Kerala’s southern state, according to federal data, recorded 0, 1, and 3 deaths caused by rabies in 2022, 2023, and 2024, while state health officials themselves claim Kerala had 15, 17, and 22 deaths, respectively, in those years. Additionally, according to a recent Lancet study, India experiences 5, 726 human rabies deaths annually.
That too is a conservative estimate, according to Omesh Bharti, deputy director and epidemiologist at the northern Himachal Pradesh state’s health department. Bharti remarked, “I believe it’s closer to the 10,000 mark.” Dog bite cases have increased ten times in the last ten years. At the same time, deaths have reduced as well”, he added, because of the increased prevalence of the rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin, which provides immediate short-term protection from rabies after potential exposure.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), India accounts for 36% of global rabies deaths.
Does India have a dog-counting problem?
Stalled dogs can be territorial packs, according to Nishant Kumar, head of Thinkpaws, a New Delhi-based think tank that conducts research on how people, animals, and waste systems interact with one another.
According to him, “Bonded dogs learn to distinguish between familiar feeders and unfamiliar strangers, which leads to strategic aggression like barking or chasing to protect their streets.”
“The issue arises when humans adjusted to dogs from one part of the city meet dogs in new locations, such as rickshaw pullers and delivery boys”, he added.
However, it remains to be seen whether Delhi and India’s stray dog populations are accurate.
The most recent nationwide stray dog count, conducted by the Indian government’s Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, revealed that Delhi made up 55, 462 of the country’s total, accounting for 15 million stray dogs.
But the government’s own data also showed that Delhi recorded 45, 052 bite cases in 2019 – a very high number of bite cases when compared with the estimated population, raising doubts about the quality of the data in question.
In contrast, a previously unpublished study from Thinkpaws estimated the dog density of the region’s 550 dogs per square kilometer. An estimated 825, 313 stray dogs, nearly 15 times the 2019 census data, are extrapolated across Delhi.
The 2024 Livestock Census was expected to be completed on March 31, but has been delayed.
How was Bhutan completely sterilized?
The ruling by India’s top court has also prompted questions over whether all stray dogs can realistically be sterilised. Bhutan has demonstrated that it can be done despite being a tiny nation in comparison.
The Himalayan country, which is sandwiched between India and China, became the first country in the world to have its stray dog population completely sterilized in 2023. The country also vaccinated 90 percent of its 1, 10, 000-strong stray dog population in just two years – that’s more than the 70 percent vaccination levels needed to maintain herd immunity in the case of diseases like rabies.
What worked was a “whole of nation” approach and the time-bound nature of the program, which the country’s king had advocated, according to Kinley Dorji, veterinarian superintendent at the National Veterinary Hospital in Bhutan, who also led these efforts.
Everyone worked together because our king gave the order. It was not just left to the livestock department or the municipality. Everyone from the farmers to De-suung’s national service program, including volunteers from the armed forces, participated,” Dorji said.
The three phases of the program were used. “Nationwide sterilisation took just two weeks. Following that, the mopping phase began, focusing on the dogs that had been missed throughout the entire country. We spent a lot of time capturing the last few elusive dogs, so it took us a few months to complete the final combing.
The team used oral sedation, trapping and darts. Only in Thimphu, where there were densely populated neighborhoods, were problematic dogs that were biting people put up separate shelters. The other dogs were all reintroduced to the same neighborhood where they had been taken.
The programme, which began in August 2021, was shut in October 2023, once the country achieved 100 percent stray dog sterilisation. During the program, Bhutan employed 13, 000 people and spent 305 million ngultrum ($3.5 million).
What does the future look like for stray dog management in India?
According to experts, India still has a long way to go.
The Supreme Court decision, according to Bharti, an epidemiologist from Himachal Pradesh who regularly treats dog bite victims, highlights the ineffectiveness of local governments and nonprofits nationwide.
“They have failed to protect the citizens, and they have failed to sterilise and immunise these dogs”, he said.
The most recent rulings from the nation’s top court were welcomed by Meghna Uniyal, director of the nonprofit Humane Foundation for People and Animals. “We have been waiting for this for two years,” said Uniyal. “Public feeding is now banned, and biting dogs are to be taken off the streets”.
However, Kumar of Thinkpaws predicted that concerns about human-dog conflict won’t vanish in India in the near future.
He argued that a long-term strategy is required, including shelter-based quarantine for dogs suspected of acquiring diseases or bitten, dog vaccinations, strays adoption, and measures to stop dogs from eating from open garbage dumps.
