Stray dog bites and rabies in India: A silent epidemic

In 2024, over 37 Lakh incidents of Dog Bites in India were reported, primarily due to stray dogs with the result that 54 persons died from rabies. Surely this is a public health crisis. The Municipality's fragile health infrastructure and its failure to provide a prompt and appropriate medical responses has aggravated ethical tension between animal rights and human safety issues and exposed the inadequacies in the system. The present Article analyses India's medico-legal framework for dog bite cases from various perspectives, including ethical, statutory and judicial. The present Article also looks at the legal framework, comprising the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960, the National Guidelines for Rabies Prophylaxis, 2019, the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023. Relying on government data and scientific research, this article considers the management of dog bite cases and compares them and with global best practices, for example, the Netherlands' CNVR policy on the management of stray dogs in the area of public health.