Permanently relocating stray dogs, like BKC’s beloved streetie Laila, is only a temporary fix. Lasting change lies in systematic sterilisation, mass vaccination, and compassion for our four-legged co-citizens
Activist Shiraz Ahmad has been standing with a placard for the last week outside the Jio World Drive mall in Bandra Kurla Complex from where community dog Laila was picked up. PIC/ASHISH RAJE
In the quiet hours between 1.40 am and 2 am on May 21, Laila, a senior community dog who had made her home on the premises of the upscale Jio World Drive mall in Bandra-Kurla Complex, was taken away. Months later, she remains missing. An FIR was registered on June 30 at the BKC Police Station by Bandra-based animal activist Shiraz Ahmad, who alleges that she was illegally relocated at the behest of the mall’s management. Despite the police case and the existence of CCTV footage and witness statements, Laila has yet to be found. Now, with the Supreme Court’s August 11 directive allowing the relocation of street dogs in Delhi-NCR, and with other states beginning to follow suit, activists like Ahmad fear there will not only be more such disappearances, but also fewer chances of return.
On August 11, the Supreme Court of India took suo moto cognisance of a troubling media report on fatal dog bites and rabies in Delhi. A two-judge bench of Justices Pardiwala and Mahadevan ordered municipal agencies across Delhi-NCR, including Gurugram, Noida, and Ghaziabad, to round up all stray dogs within eight weeks and confine them in shelters without releasing them back onto the streets. The court said that “infants and young children… should not at any cost fall prey to rabies.”
Animal rights groups, veterinarians, community animal feeders, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and political leaders, including Maneka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, opposed this, warning that the order could undermine the long-standing humane Animal Birth Control (ABC) policy formulated by the Animal Welfare Board of India. By August 13-14, after widespread protests, Chief Justice of India Bhushan Gavai referred the case to a newly constituted three-judge Bench (Justices Nath, Mehta, Anjaria), which on August 14 reserved judgment while noting that the “whole problem is because of the inaction of local authorities”. The court stressed that municipal bodies had failed to enforce the ABC Rules and that this negligence — rather than flaws in the policy — had allowed the situation to escalate.
Animal welfare experts warn that the August 11 order risks triggering the very problem it seeks to solve. They call it the “vacuum effect” — a well-documented phenomenon in which removing territorial, sterilised street dogs leaves a habitat unguarded, only for new, unvaccinated and unsterilised dogs to move in. The result: territorial fights, a spike in mating and breeding, and potentially higher human–dog conflict than before.
Abodh Aras, the CEO of NGO Welfare of Stray Dogs (WSD), warns that removal — whether by culling or relocation — fails because “street dogs are territorial, and removal creates a vacuum which gets filled by unsterilised, unvaccinated dogs from neighbouring areas.” In one 2009 case, illegal relocation at a Mumbai club took dog numbers from 38 to 110 within eight years; after years of rebuilding trust and resuming ABC, the number dropped to 57, but “would have been in single digits today” if the dogs had not been displaced.
Activists say that the Indie dog is an important part of our culture and cannot be just cut out. FILE PIC/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
Meet Ashar, legal advisor and director of cruelty response at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India, calls the vacuum effect a basic rule of dog ecology. “Dogs are territorial. The moment we remove them… dogs from neighbouring territories start migrating and moving to areas which are empty.” In practice, he says, sterilise-vaccinate-return works because resident, ear-notched dogs act like a protective buffer. “By actually neutering dogs, sterilising them, and dropping them back in the same area… we create a shield… so the chances of rabies spread completely goes down, almost becomes nil when… the dog is sterilised and also vaccinated.”
On implementation, Ashar argues that cities should treat feeders as partners, not adversaries. He points to BBMP’s feeder-assisted model in Bengaluru — where a municipal feeding drive helped catch and vaccinate dogs — and urges front-loading female-dog sterilisation, expanding Mumbai’s ABC capacity beyond eight centres, and training municipal teams in humane catching (nets/hand-catching or vet-supervised darting rather than graspers). As proof that scale is possible, he cites Lucknow (~80 per cent coverage) and Jaipur (~70 per cent) as feeder-led successes achieved on tighter budgets.
Ashar also flags the legal dimension. He notes that a 2015 Supreme Court ruling required courts to balance human safety with stray-dog protections and treated the ABC Rules as adequate for population control, rabies prevention, and bite-case handling. In his view, a bench of equal strength should follow that line or refer the matter to a larger bench. He further raises audi alteram partem (“let the other party be heard”) concerns from August 11 because the Animal Welfare Board of India, the relevant government body, was not heard. His conclusion is that removal invites turnover, conflict, and disease; while birth control and vaccination, done collaboratively and at scale, protects both public safety and animal welfare.
Meet Ashar at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) office in Andheri. PIC/ASHISH RAJE
Mumbai offers a live example of how in-situ sterilisation, vaccination, and community engagement have kept stray dog populations in check. Here, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has run a systematic ABC programme since 1994, steadily sterilising and vaccinating street dogs in partnership with local NGOs and community feeders. A 2024 citywide survey conducted with Humane Society International/India estimated the stray dog population at 90,757 — down from 95,172 in 2014 — with an overall sterilisation rate of 62.9 per cent (slightly higher for males than females). The survey also found a 21.8 per cent reduction in dog density in streets and a 27.4 per cent reduction in slums over the past decade, despite Mumbai’s growing human population.
Dr Kalimpasha Pathan, head of veterinary services at the BMC, who has been part of the ABC programme for decades, says this is “a very good percentage” compared to other states. “This is the only corporation which has been sterilising dogs since 1994, and we’ve steadily maintained this work since then,” he says, adding that this stability is the product of sustained effort, strict post-surgery release protocols, and cooperation between authorities and citizens, rather than relocation.
He adds sterilisation alone is not enough. “Paid pet licensing to prevent abandonment, mass vaccination, and proper veterinary facilities are equally important,” he notes. “When these aspects work together, we see the desired results.” Dr Pathan explains that sterilisation alone cannot address bite incidents, since they often spike during breeding seasons — in the monsoon and again in October–November — when dogs migrate and enter unfamiliar territories.
Dogs in Mumbai have even learnt to travel the local train system. FILE PIC/Nimesh Dave
“If you have a healthy population of dogs, and every habitat maintains its carrying capacity, then problems won’t arise,” he says. Since January this year, the BMC has received 10,700 complaints — from sterilisation and vaccination requests to human-dog conflict cases. Dr Pathan says the key to results is “coordinated efforts” among municipal authorities, feeders, and local communities.
If the BMC’s citywide ABC programme is the framework, NGOs like WSD are its most consistent partners. Since inception, WSD has sterilised over 68,000 street dogs, most in the island city, through “a consistent and targeted, area-wise sterilisation programme,” says Aras.
With current sterilisation coverage at 78 per cent for females and 74 per cent for males in the island city — and 87 per cent and 92 per cent respectively in A-ward — WSD has now expanded to suburban areas like Kurla. Aras credits this success to “the participation of feeders and caretakers who make the dogs more accessible when our van goes to catch them for sterilisation or rabies vaccination”.
Aras adds that thousands of street-dwelling people keep dogs for “compassion, unconditional love, or security” and rely on NGOs for sterilisation, vaccination, and treatment. Today, Mumbai’s street dog population is 5 per cent lower than a decade ago, and rabies deaths have “gone down drastically from the pre-1994 culling era,” due to “a multipronged approach: annual rabies mass vaccination, education and awareness in schools, and free post-bite vaccines in municipal hospitals.”
Animal activists and community feeders say they have been seeing signs of what the vacuum effect can do, long before the Supreme Court’s 11 August order is implemented. Shiraz Ahmad, who filed the FIR in Laila’s case and has been spending his evenings outside the Jio World Drive mall with a placard reading “Justice for Laila,” anchors the sentiment that removing a well-integrated community dog like Laila doesn’t just erase a familiar presence, it destabilises the area too. He believes the August 11 order will embolden those who already carry out illegal removals.
“Even before this ruling, people were relocating dogs for selfish reasons. Now they’ll do it openly, using the judgment as a shield,” he says, warning that the change will “only harm the dogs, causing them to suffer and die in stress and pain.”
For Reshma Shelatkar, who has spent 25 years feeding and managing dogs in one of Mumbai’s busiest market zones (Four Bungalows), the directive felt like her life’s work was under threat. She has built a system of designated feeding spots, regular sterilisation and vaccination drives, and community sensitisation to prevent conflict. “Everything has to be action-planned; you can’t just dump dogs into pounds,” she says. “The pound concept is not a solution.”
Reshma Shelatkar
Ruchi Singhi, a resident of Dadar who funds and carries out sterilisation and vaccination drives herself, says the danger isn’t abstract, it’s immediate. “Every time a dominant, vaccinated dog is removed, a new one comes in. Then the whole cycle starts again — neutering, vaccination, calming tensions. Without that, vaccinated animals are exposed to infections, territorial fights return, and previously calm lanes can slide back into conflict,” she says.
Ruchi Singhi. PIC/KIRTI SURVE PARADE
Removing familiar dogs also severs the chain of care, Singhi adds. Because she personally handles most of the sterilisation, vaccination, and daily treatment in her patch, she knows which animals are on medication or a special diet, and when doses are due. “If a sick dog is picked up, I can’t find them to finish the course of medication. They won’t survive that interruption,” she says. At the same time, shelters are unlikely to provide that kind of day-to-day continuity for street cases.
Moreover, as Aras says, the cost of keeping dogs in shelters — even if implemented — is steep. Sterilisation, including a rabies shot, costs about R2,500 per dog — a one-time expense — compared to roughly Rs 2.19 lakh just for food over a dog’s 12-year lifespan in a shelter, excluding staff, medicine, and infrastructure costs. Community dogs, on the other hand, are fed and cared for at the expense of the people in the area or the NGOs which have taken on the task.
If Singhi’s account is about the daily grind of coexistence, actor-activist Jaya Bhattacharya brings a longer arc — from fear to friendship, to advocacy. After moving to Mumbai in the late ’90s, she says a black community dog “Kali… zabardasti made friends with me,” often sitting at her doorway with two paws inside “like a quiet sentry.” The bond turned into a crash course in street realities: Kali gave birth outside Bhattacharya’s home; neighbours threw the pups away; Kali “brought back all the dead babies” to her door. Later, when complaints led civic dog-catchers to the area, “the males fled… the catchers caught Kali,” she recalls. “Kali never came back.”
Jaya Bhattacharya
That moment shaped how Bhattacharya reads today’s relocation push. She no longer feeds on the street — she runs ThankYouEarth, a small medical centre in Malad that treats injured or ill animals, which she says charges no admission or fostering fees. “We deal with medical cases; we also do neutering/sterilisation,” she says. Her core worry is simple: once familiar, sterilised dogs are taken away, the neighbourhood loses stable sentries and new, unsterilised dogs drift in — exactly the displacement pattern feeders describe on the ground.
Bhattacharya’s critique is emotive but grounded in everyday frictions: she recounts harassment from neighbours when she lived in an old MHADA complex; the casual gatekeeping of lifts and public spaces; and what she calls “deep-seated” civic bottlenecks that make humane ABC work harder than it should be. On safety, she does not minimise bite risks; typically a dog reacts with the “three Fs response — freeze, flee, fight”, she says. Bhattacharya worries that the SC’s August 11 direction will legitimise removals that were already happening covertly, and leave both citizens and dogs worse off.
Months after she vanished, Laila’s empty spot outside Jio World Drive remains a small, visible gap in a larger, invisible system. Multiply that absence by thousands, and you have the true cost of relocation: territories left unguarded, conflict reignited, and years of steady progress undone. Now, as the apex court weighs its final verdict, it’s vital to remember why this debate matters — not just for dog welfare, but for human safety too. Whether the court’s next word preserves that progress or erases it will decide not just the fate of India’s street dogs, but the balance between fear and coexistence on our streets.
Dog-bite incidents and rabies deaths are not abstract statistics; they are real, preventable tragedies. India is believed to account for roughly one-third of the world’s 59,000 rabies deaths each year — around 18,000–20,000 people — yet government surveillance in 2024 recorded only 54 suspected rabies deaths alongside 3.7 million dog-bite cases. This huge gap points to chronic under-reporting and poor monitoring, meaning the actual burden is far higher than the official figures suggest. In such a context, removing vaccinated, sterilised street dogs risks dismantling one of the few proven defences against rabies: a stable, immunised community dog population maintained through large-scale Animal Birth Control and vaccination programmes.
Relocation has consistently failed to solve either problem. Evidence shows that in-situ sterilisation, mass vaccination, and community participation can stabilise dog populations, reduce rabies deaths, and ease human-dog conflict — without creating the instability of the vacuum effect. The challenge, then, is not choosing between human lives and animal welfare, but recognising that the two are intertwined. A vaccinated, sterilised, stable community dog population is also a safer one for people. And perhaps the missing piece has always been the simplest: treating our four-legged co-citizens with empathy. If fear and hostility have brought us here, maybe it’s time to give kindness — backed by science and civic responsibility — a real chance.
Mumbai’s U-turn
On August 13, in the immediate wake of the Supreme Court’s two-judge order, BJP MLA Ameet Satam urged the BMC to promptly shelter strays and accelerate sterilisation. Less than 24 hours later — after the matter was heard by a three-judge bench and reserved for judgment — Satam softened his stance on X, saying that after speaking to animal lovers, he now supported fast-tracking sterilisation, expanding anti-rabies vaccine access, and using “compassionate methods” in line with the ABC Rules 2023. His reversal highlighted both the political sensitivity of the issue and the growing recognition that humane, science-based population control, not mass removals, offers the only lasting solution.
‘If they bite, it’s a defence mechanism’
Having studied aggression in dogs, we have seen that it doesn’t just come up overnight, unless there is a medical cause like sudden pain or illness. We then look to learnt behaviour; that is, if they are territorial or fearful, there is always a reason. Dogs are not the type of animals who get up and say “come, let’s go and bite everyone”. It’s not how it works; it’s based on their survival instinct. At the same time, there is no justification for someone who has lost a loved one in a dog attack; but it is for us to understand as a preventive, that if they bite on the street it is done as a defense mechanism. If they see that aggression is keeping people away from them, then they begin to use it more often — whether it is to be territorial, frightened, or when they have had a bad experience with a human.
Dhabhar, dog trainer and canine behaviourist
For example, if there is a street dog outside my building which I kick every day — and then I move. A year later if someone who looks like me passes him, the dog’s protective instinct kicks in. We know these attacks are not irrational. There is a lot of gauging and science before dogs use aggression. They think about their survival rate if they attack; also how much energy they will use and if they have any left over to keep protecting themselves. There is some thought process but we also understand that it doesn’t make an attack easier to see, let alone bear, if your loved one is attacked.
Why have we not found a solution to this? I feel it’s because no one really cares about dogs. In a country where crime and other equally important things have sucked the states of their resources, creating a policy and then trying to execute it has not happened. This observation by the court seems to be a result of the state giving up, since there was no solution found for us to co-exist with dogs. The solution is education right from the schools. There are techniques that we teach kids when they see a dog coming after them; we ask them to place a bag or something between the dog and themselves, or to turn their back towards the dog, at least — but it is not taken seriously and taught in schools.
Finally, I acknowledge that many people think of their dogs as their kids, but we encourage pet parents to understand that these are dogs at the end of the day, and that we too have to behave with them in a manner suiting that.
As told to Arpika Bhosale
‘Eight weeks? Even terrorists get more time to state their case’
We are an NGO , The Anubis-Tiger Foundation , that works with rehoming abandoned and homeless dogs. People think it’s easier for breed dogs to find a home than for Indian breeds. If it were true then we wouldn’t have 93 breeds in custody waiting to go home. We rehome abandoned dogs . All dogs. Breeds and indies would have the same behavior if their circumstances of life were the same.
Deepa Talib, The Anubis-Tiger Foundation
The breed versus Indies adoption debate only makes our work harder. What’s happening in Delhi to our community dogs has been devastating to all of us all over the country.In the past we have seen that terrorists too get a chance to put forward their side of things and the law gives them years to do so. With our street dogs, though, the time given is only eight weeks?
As told to Arpika Bhosale
What to do if confronted by a dog
Tips from Varuna Kaur, certified canine behaviour consultant and trainer:
>> Most dogs bite when they feel threatened or misunderstood. Just like us humans, they are also territorial about their homes.
>> Try not to run or make quick, jerky movements or scream. Dogs have a natural chasing instinct. Stand your ground, make slower movements till you reach a safe spot. Most dog bites happen when the person tries to run away or climb a gate or fence.
>> If you are on a two-wheeler, best way to avoid being bitten or chased is to STOP your vehicle and leave the area very slowly.
>> To be safe, create a barrier between the dog and you, for example with a bag, jacket or anything that is handy.
>> If the dog approaches, it is best to stay calm, let the dog sniff. Most dogs will walk away.
>> If a dog does bite, the best way to cause the least amount of damage is to stay as sturdy and stiff as possible. The more you struggle and fight, the harder it will be for the dog to back down.
>> Be a little mindful of what dogs are doing. If they are eating or sleeping, and are disturbed, they will naturally defend.
>> Infants and children must always be accompanied by an adult, and this is not just for safety from biting dogs.
>> If bitten, wash the area with soap and water and please seek immediate medical attention.
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