India’s Supreme Court in early August issued a dramatic order calling for the removal of all stray dogs from the streets of the national capital, prompting outrage from animal rights activists.

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.

But while the revised order has calmed some of the passions that erupted over the initial verdict, the court’s interventions have also set off a broader debate in India over dogs on the country’s streets, the menace they pose and how best to deal with them.

So what were the court orders all about, what was the trigger, how big of a problem are India’s stray dogs – and how many such dogs does the country have in the first place?

What did the Supreme Court order?

On August 11, a Supreme Court bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan directed the Delhi government and local bodies to immediately commence the removal of stray dogs from all localities in 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.

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The ruling drew criticism from animal rights activists who questioned whether local governments had the infrastructure and resources needed to execute the order, amid worries that it could lead to acts of cruelty towards the dogs.

Some experts also pointed out that the Supreme Court order might stand in violation of India’s Animal Birth Control Rules, introduced in 2023. Those rules were framed to control stray dog populations humanely, through a policy of capturing, sterilising, vaccinating and then releasing them. But the August 11 order barred their release onto the streets of Delhi.

Eventually, amid protests, a new three-judge bench heard the case again, on August 22 and modified the earlier order. “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 clarified that the release after capture would not “apply to the dogs infected with rabies or suspected to be infected with rabies, and those that display aggressive behaviour”.

Further, the court ordered the creation of dedicated feeding spaces for stray dogs in each municipal ward, making it clear that feeding dogs on the streets would now be prohibited.

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.

Does India have a dog bite crisis?

The Supreme Court took on the case because of concerns over an increasing number of dog bite cases in the country.

According to the federal Ministry of Health data, the country recorded 2,189,909 dog bite cases in 2022, a number that rose to 3,052,521 cases in 2023, and to 3,715,713 cases in 2024.

Dog bites, similar to bites from other animals, can transmit the rabies virus to humans. When left untreated, it manifests as either furious or paralytic rabies, both of which are almost always fatal once symptoms develop. In India, dog bites account for 99 percent of rabies fatalities.

Federal Health Ministry data shows that India recorded 21, 50, and 54 rabies-induced human deaths, respectively, in the last three years. But experts question those numbers.

While federal data shows that the southern state of Kerala recorded 0,1, and 3 rabies-induced deaths in 2022, 2023 and 2024, the state’s health authorities themselves say that Kerala had 15, 17 and 22 deaths respectively, in those years. And a recent Lancet study estimated 5,726 human rabies deaths occurring annually in India.

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That too is a conservative estimate, according to Omesh Bharti, deputy director and epidemiologist at the northern Himachal Pradesh state’s health department. “I think it is closer to the 10,000 mark,” Bharti said. “In the last 10 years, dog bite cases have increased 10 times. 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.

India contributes 36 percent of global rabies deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Does India have a dog-counting problem?

Nishant Kumar, head of Thinkpaws, a New Delhi-based think tank whose research focuses on the interaction between people, animals and waste systems, said that stray dogs form territorial packs.

“Bonded dogs learn to discriminate between familiar feeders and unfamiliar strangers, resulting in strategic aggression like barking or chasing to guard their streets,” he said.

“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.

But questions linger over whether Delhi and India even have an accurate count of their stray dog populations.

The 2019 Livestock Census conducted by the Indian government’s Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying – the most recent nationwide stray dog count – found that India housed 15 million stray dogs, with Delhi accounting for 55,462 of them.

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.

An unpublished study by Thinkpaws, meanwhile, assessed the dog density of the national capital region at roughly 550 dogs per square kilometre. When extrapolated across Delhi, that suggests an estimated population of 825,313 stray dogs – nearly 15 times the 2019 census data.

The 2024 Livestock Census was expected to be completed on March 31, but has been delayed.

How did Bhutan achieve 100 percent sterilisation?

The ruling by India’s top court has also prompted questions over whether all stray dogs can realistically be sterilised. While it is a tiny country by comparison, Bhutan has shown that it can be done.

In 2023, the Himalayan nation, sandwiched between India and China, became the first country in the world to achieve 100 percent sterilisation of its stray dog population. 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.

Kinley Dorji, veterinary superintendent at the National Veterinary Hospital, Bhutan, who also led these efforts, said what worked was a “whole of nation” approach and the time-bound nature of the programme, which was pushed by the country’s king.

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“Because the command came from our king, everybody cooperated. It was not just left to the livestock department or the municipality. Everybody from the armed forces and volunteers from De-suung [Bhutan’s national service programme] to the farmers participated,” Dorji said.

The programme was executed in three phases. “Nationwide sterilisation took just two weeks. Subsequently, the mopping phase began, targeting the dogs that had been missed during the nationwide phase. The final combing phase took us a few months, as we spent a lot of time capturing the remaining elusive dogs,” Dorji said.

The team used oral sedation, trapping and darts. Only in the heavily populated Thimphu did they have to set up separate shelters for problematic dogs that were biting people. All the other dogs were released back to the same area from which they were picked up.

The programme, which began in August 2021, was shut in October 2023, once the country achieved 100 percent stray dog sterilisation. Bhutan spent 305 million ngultrum ($3.5m) and employed 13,000 people during the programme.

What does the future look like for stray dog management in India?

India, by comparison, has a long way to go, say experts.

Bharti, the Himachal Pradesh epidemiologist, who deals with dog bite victims regularly, says the Supreme Court ruling highlights the failure of local governments and nonprofits across the country.

“They have failed to protect the citizens, and they have failed to sterilise and immunise these dogs,” he said.

Meghna Uniyal, director at the Humane Foundation for People and Animals, a nonprofit, welcomed the latest directives from the country’s top court. “We have waited two years for this,” Uniyal said. “Public feeding is now banned, and biting dogs are to be taken off the streets.”

But concerns around human-dog conflict won’t vanish in India anytime soon, said Kumar of Thinkpaws.

What’s needed, he said, is a long-term plan, including shelter-based quarantine for dogs that are known to be carrying diseases or that bite, vaccination of dogs, adoption of strays and mechanisms to reduce the practice of dogs eating from open rubbish dumps.

Anything less, he said, “is misguided compassion”.