A coalition of multi-sectoral experts from various global institutions has lent their weight to the petitioners in the stray dogs case, which is being heard in the Supreme Court. The coalition warned that authorities’ proposals to remove and rehouse India’s free-roaming community dogs en masse could endanger public health, go beyond the law, destabilize urban ecosystems and impose huge fiscal costs without improving public safety. The warning draws on the experience of veterans in the fields of public health, behavioral science, veterinary medicine and law. The signatories include Chinny Krishna, the pioneer of India’s animal birth control program, evolutionary biologist Lee Dugatkin (University of Louisville, USA), Anindita Bhadra of IISER Kolkata, public health expert Leena Menghaney, Pushpinder Singh Khera of AIIMS Jodhpur and Julie Corfmat of Mission Rabies. The organizations include the International Companion Animal Network (ICAN), Pet Dog Trainers of Europe (PDTE), the International Institute for Canine Ethics (IICE) and the Bangalore Hundeskole Academy for Research and Canine Studies (BHARCS). Highlights of their analysis:
- Free-living dogs form stable social groups if food sources, sterilization and vaccination protection remain the same.
- Large-scale removal disrupts these systems and creates territorial gaps that are quickly filled by other dogs – often unvaccinated and unsterilized – an effect that is associated with an increase in dog bites and an increased risk of disease.
- Mass removal undermines rabies control by destroying herd immunity. India’s existing Catch-Neuter-Vaccinate-Release (CNVR) framework, if consistently implemented, targets the internationally recognized threshold of at least 70% of dogs in a given area to be vaccinated.
- The data shows sharp declines in human rabies deaths and dog bite rates in areas with ongoing sterilization and vaccination programs. Abandoning this approach risks undoing the hard-won gains of the last two decades.
- Mass housing, experts argue, increases the risks. Housing animals at high densities is classified as a biohazardous activity worldwide and requires strict quarantine, disease surveillance and occupational safety protocols.
Dugatkin noted that claims justifying removal are often based on myth rather than biology. “These dogs have coexisted with humans in India for thousands of years. Disrupting stable populations due to fear or misinformation ignores everything we know about animal behavior and disease ecology,” he said.Anthrozoologist Sindhoor Pangal said the debate had moved away from the evidence. “Replacing proven, cost-effective public health systems with a model of mass incarceration is not only unscientific – it actively increases risk while depleting resources that should bolster vaccinations and disease prevention,” she said. IICE statements indicate that overcrowding, stress-related immunosuppression, and rapid disease transmission are common in large animal shelters, particularly where enforcement capacity is limited.Free-roaming dogs play a role in urban ecosystems by eating waste and limiting the spread of rats and other scavengers that cannot be vaccinated or monitored. Sudden removal of the dog can lead to an explosion in the rodent population, which is linked to diseases such as leptospirosis and plague.Legal experts point out that mass relocations are in direct contradiction to the Animal (Dog) Birth Control Rules, 2023, which require sterilization, vaccination and return to the original territory. The large-scale housing of animals also raises constitutional and labor law concerns given the occupational risks associated with the mass keeping of animals.
