Pets in Hyderabad, 2026: six estimates of the dog population and no census, 42,000 bites and 32 rabies deaths in a year, five Animal Birth Control centres for a city split into three corporations, a free pet licence that one owner in five has taken, and 47 listed clinics with 14 open all night

Pets in Hyderabad: the city's numbers on one page

Hyderabad's numbers come from affidavits, one hospital and a corporation that has just been divided into three. Fifteen figures, from thirteen sources.

Two rows carry the weight. Hyderabad claims to have sterilised more of its dogs than any other metro, and its nodal hospital recorded more rabies deaths in 2025 than Mumbai's whole state did in 2024. The rest of this report is about how both can be true of the same city at once.

How many street dogs Hyderabad has: six official estimates between 3.7 and 7 lakh, and no census

Mumbai counted its dogs twice; Bengaluru once by zone; Chennai once by ward. Hyderabad has never counted at all, and the estimates it uses instead have moved by a factor of two in three years.

The GHMC has never conducted a dog census, and in March 2023 its officials 'refused to comment on the dog census or delve into details of how they arrived at an estimate of 5.7 lakh dogs', of which it claimed 4.7 lakh sterilised, while data it had submitted to higher authorities indicated over 8 lakh. In May 2024 the corporation said the population had fallen from over 8 lakh when it was formed in 2007 to 3.7 lakh, more than 80 percent of them sterilised. In August 2025 'a survey by GHMC and an NGO revealed that 20 per cent of the estimated 3.9 lakh stray dogs, about 75,000, remain unsterilised'; in November 2025 the state's affidavit to the Supreme Court put 'over 3 lakhs of 3.8 lakh strays under GHMC control sterilised'; in May 2026 officials gave 4.70 lakh for the core urban region with 50,000 unsterilised and the chief veterinary officer repeated 'over 80 per cent'; and in October 2026 the corporation's planners worked from 'an estimated seven lakh street dogs'.

The Livestock Census does not settle it: it counted 3,92,932 stray dogs in the whole of Telangana in 2019, 10.6 per 1,000 people, a figure the corporation's estimates for the city alone exceed in five of the seven statements above. Bonbeno's street dog report sets Hyderabad's claim beside the three cities that have actually counted, and the sterilised share, 80 percent or more in every GHMC statement since 2024, has never been measured by a survey the corporation has published.

Dog bites and rabies: 42,000 bites in 2024, 100 a day, and a hospital that recorded 34 rabies deaths in 2025

Hyderabad's rabies toll is the highest of the eight cities in this series, and it comes from one hospital's register rather than the surveillance table.

Hyderabad's Government Fever Hospital 'treated 27172 people, and 13 people died of rabies' in 2023, and in 2025 'treated 24705 people, and 34 people died of rabies', with more than 300 people bitten a day visiting government hospitals. Two weeks earlier the same hospital's figures had been reported as 8 rabies deaths in 2022 rising to 32 in 2025, with dog bite cases 'from 31,000 cases in 2022 to 42,000 in 2024' and the GHMC estimating 50,000 to 60,000 dogs neither vaccinated nor sterilised. The state 'witnesses close to 300 dog bites per day', about 100 of them in Greater Hyderabad, and reported approximately 3.4 lakh bites in three years; the GHMC's own affidavit to the Telangana High Court put 2021 to 2024 at over 3.3 lakh bites and 36 suspected rabies deaths, and about 80 percent of hospitals were found without rabies immunoglobulin for grade 3 bites.

The national table disagrees with the hospital in both directions. The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives Telangana 92,924 dog bites in 2022, 1,19,014 in 2023, 1,21,997 in 2024 and 10,424 in January 2025, and zero suspected human rabies deaths in every year; Hyderabad's 42,000 is a third of the state's 2024 count, and its hospital's 34 deaths are 34 more than the table knows of. Bonbeno's dog bite report ranks every state on the same table. The deaths that moved policy were children's: a four-year-old mauled to death in Amberpet on 21 February 2023, and a three-year-old in Beerpur who died in August 2025 of a bite in July.

The Animal Birth Control programme: 2,23,000 operations in its best year, 51,887 in 2023-24, five centres for 3,000 dogs, and seven more planned

Hyderabad's sterilisation output peaked in 2018-19 and has run at a quarter of that since. The corporation says the job is 80 percent done; its own centres say they are full.

The GHMC reported around 90,000 birth-control operations in 2014-15, 60,000 in 2015-16, 98,000 in 2016-17, 1,51,000 in 2017-18 and 2,23,000 in 2018-19, then 50,091 in 2020-21, 73,601 in 2021-22 and 40,155 in 2022-23, with 2019-20 'not available', and its officials blamed an allocation of Rs 320 per operation, against Rs 920 in Mumbai and Rs 750 in Delhi, for the stray population, asking for the Rs 18 crore budget to be raised. In May 2024 the corporation gave 73,601 for 2021-22, 47,874 for 2022-23 and 51,887 for 2023-24. A two-day drive in November 2024 caught 788 dogs and sterilised 323. Set against an estimated 3.8 to 7 lakh dogs, 51,887 a year is between 7 and 14 percent of the population; Mumbai, with 90,757 dogs, plans 45,000 a year, as Bonbeno's Mumbai report records.

Five centres, 3,000 dogs, and the 60 the planners asked for

The city has five animal care centres, at Fathullaguda, Chudi Bazaar, Amberpet, Kukatpally and Jeedimetla, 'with a combined capacity to accommodate around 3,000 dogs', and because they run at capacity 'only a small number of dogs are being sterilised' and some are released before the seven-day observation ends. In October 2026 officials proposed one centre per zone, taking the total to 12, after a larger plan for 60 centres of at least 1,000 dogs each, one per circle; a GHMC centre at Katedan is under construction and 'is expected to conduct 70-80 sterilisation surgeries' a day, Shamshabad is planned, and the new Cyberabad corporation is doubling Mahadevpur's 210 kennels and reviving a defunct centre at Nizampet. A Gopanpally complex of 4,350 square yards for an animal care centre and veterinary hospital, built by the Ramky Foundation, was announced in October 2023 with a six-month timeline.

The Supreme Court's order and the first 277 dogs

On 7 November 2025 the Supreme Court ordered every school, hospital, sports complex, bus stand and railway station cleared of street dogs and the dogs moved to shelters after sterilisation and vaccination; on the drive's first day the GHMC 'caught and relocated 277 stray dogs from various Government hospitals' to its animal care centres. Until then sterilised dogs had been released at the spot they were caught, with 'billing software designed to prevent releases beyond a 150-metre radius'. The three affidavits the state filed under the ABC Rules, 2023 are where the 3.8 lakh and 'over 3 lakh sterilised' figures come from.

One city, three corporations: what the February 2026 split means for a pet owner

The GHMC that sterilised, licensed and cremated Hyderabad's animals for 19 years was divided on 11 February 2026. The centres, the app and the register did not move with the boundaries.

By Government Order 55 of 11 February 2026 the state split the GHMC into a residual GHMC of six zones and 150 wards, a Cyberabad Municipal Corporation of three zones and 76 wards, and a Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation of three zones and 74 wards, with Jayesh Ranjan as special officer for all three and R.V. Karnan, G. Srijana and T. Vinay Krishna Reddy as commissioners. Cyberabad took the Serilingampally, Kukatpally and Qutubullapur zones, Malkajgiri the Malkajgiri, Uppal and LB Nagar zones, and the GHMC kept Shamshabad, Rajendranagar, Golconda, Charminar and Khairatabad.

Which corporation a pet owner now deals with depends on the zone, and the reports this report could reach say nothing about how Cyberabad or Malkajgiri will issue licences or run their own ABC programmes; the Cyberabad corporation's veterinary wing was the one quoted on Mahadevpur and Nizampet in October 2026. The split was challenged in the Telangana High Court; the figures in this report are the old GHMC's, because that is the body every one of them was reported for.

Veterinary care: a state network of 2,117 institutions and no mobile unit, and 47 private clinics of which 14 never close

Telangana's government veterinary system is built for 3.26 crore livestock. Hyderabad's pets are treated in the most round-the-clock private layer of the eight cities after Bengaluru's.

Telangana had 2,306 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024 and 1,222 sanctioned government doctor posts, 190 of them vacant, 15.5 percent. Its 2,117 government institutions are 107 veterinary hospitals and polyclinics, 909 dispensaries and 1,101 aid centres, and it ran no mobile veterinary unit under the central scheme in January 2025, one of three states with none. Bonbeno's Vet Access Index ranks Telangana on 14,155 livestock per registered vet, among the worst-served states; the city's one large government facility for pets, the Super Speciality Veterinary Hospital at Narayanguda, carries 3,781 Google reviews, the most of any clinic in the directory.

The private layer: 47 clinics, 14 of them 24-hour clinics

Bonbeno's vet directory for Hyderabad, each entry checked against its Google listing on 16 October 2026 for an address, a live phone number and the hours the clinic itself publishes, lists 47 clinics and hospitals, 14 of which publish round-the-clock opening, from Ivy Paws and Vet Spot in the Kukatpally and Hafeezpet belt to Sniffers at Kothapet, Vet N Pet at Jubilee Hills, Pet's Care at Kharmanghat and Dr Petsafe, the second-largest 24-hour clinic layer of the eight cities after Bengaluru's 18. Thirty-five of the 47 are rated 4.5 or higher and 20,347 Google reviews sit behind an average rating of 4.63, second of the eight cities, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad, behind Ahmedabad's 4.65; 21 have a website. The directory's method note records the trap it met: two listings shared a telephone number and a locality while disagreeing about whether the practice is open 24 hours, and the row with the unsupported claim was dropped.

The Google Maps 'pet grooming' pull of 2 November 2026 returned 64 pet groomers, 12 pet stores and 3 veterinarians in its first 100 results, and the 'pet boarding' pull 75 boarding, day-care or kennel listings and 4 cat boarding services, with 46 of the 100 claiming 24-hour opening, the most of any city. What a consultation, a vaccination or a surgery costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Shops, groomers and boarders: 300 Google Maps listings, 28 shop names that sell animals, and a state register of 86 shops

Hyderabad's pet retail sells live animals more openly than any city but Ahmedabad, and Telangana is the one state besides Tamil Nadu whose register has a published count.

Of the first 100 Google Maps results for 'pet shop' in Hyderabad, 73 are pet stores or pet supply stores, 18 are aquarium, tropical fish or bird shops and 9 are clinics or groomers; 97 are rated, the median listing has 36 reviews, 63.9 percent score 4.5 or higher, 26 percent have a website, 6 are marked temporarily closed, 12 claim 24-hour opening and 28 names advertise live animals, puppies, birds or fish, second only to Ahmedabad's 36. No chain appears: Heads Up For Tails, which has seven listings in Mumbai's hundred, has none here. The grooming pull found 64 pet groomers, a median of 68 reviews, 81.7 percent at 4.5 or higher and 42 percent with a website, with Vetic once; the boarding pull 75 boarding, day-care or kennel listings, 80 percent of the rated ones at 4.5 or higher and 45 percent with a website. Bonbeno's dog grooming cost guide and boarding versus a pet sitter cover the prices and the choice.

Registered pet shops: 86 in the state, none in the city in 2021

Every shop that sells an animal needs a certificate from the State Animal Welfare Board under the Pet Shop Rules, 2018. In June 2021 the state's Principal Secretary for Municipal Administration said 'none of the 70 pet shops in Hyderabad have mandatory registration' and gave them four weeks; by October 2023 an RTI reply cited in Humane Society International's petition to the Telangana High Court put the state's register at 86 pet shops and 9 dog breeders, and the court sought the state's response in four weeks. The Animal Welfare Board of India wrote to every state that December that only Maharashtra had reported on implementing the Rules. Bonbeno's pet shops report carries the Rules clause by clause and sets Telangana's 86 beside Tamil Nadu's 399.

The pet licence: Rs 50 until 2024, free on the MyGHMC app since, and 14,000 takers of a mandatory permit

Hyderabad is the one city of the eight where the licence costs nothing. It is also the one where the corporation has published how few hold it.

Since August 2024 the GHMC has registered pets 'on the MyGHMC app, for free', with reminders for vaccination and deworming, and officers named in each zone's veterinary section to help. Before that the licence cost Rs 50, paid online at the corporation's pet licence portal, with a recent vaccination certificate, residence proof and 'NOC from at least two neighbors'; the corporation began issuing unique pet ID numbers in December 2020, built from the circle, ward, year and a random number, and said it issued 'about 7,000 to 8,000 licences' a year. The documents the current guides list are the same three: a photograph of the pet, the anti-rabies vaccination certificate, and the owner's address and identity proof.

The uptake is the number the corporation itself has released. In December 2021 'there are around 50,000 pet dogs in the city, only 465 of them are registered', and the GHMC announced fines of Rs 1,000 to Rs 50,000 and seizure for unregistered dogs in public places; by June 2025, with the licence free, 'only around 14,000 have been licensed' of an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 pet dogs and cats, 'about 17.5% to 20%', and the corporation was 'planning to introduce fines'. The permit is mandatory, costs nothing, takes a day, and four owners in five have not applied. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India walks the MyGHMC steps beside Mumbai's, Delhi's and Chennai's, and the metro guide covers what the Hyderabad Metro allows.

When a pet dies: one pet crematorium at Fathullaguda, run by People for Animals, and a second built at Gopanpally

Hyderabad's municipal crematorium is a GHMC building with an NGO's incinerator inside it, and the NGO sets the price.

The pet crematorium at the GHMC animal care centre in Fathullaguda, near Nagole, was built for about Rs 1 crore, the corporation paying for the civil structure and People for Animals for the LPG incinerator and its installation, and was inaugurated on 6 December 2022; it cremates about four dogs per two-hour cycle, and People for Animals runs it under a memorandum of understanding and 'will collect user charges from people for the cremation of their pets'. No charge is printed in any report this report could reach, so the price is whatever the operator quotes on the day. A second pet crematorium of 500 square yards was approved at Gopanpally in October 2023, built by the Raga Foundation as a corporate social responsibility project beside the Ramky Foundation's animal care centre and hospital on 4,350 square yards; whether it has opened is not reported.

Mumbai, by contrast, has three municipal crematoria with online booking and a printed free tariff at Malad, and Delhi one with a printed Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000, as Bonbeno's city reports record. A pet cremated at Fathullaguda is taken there by the owner; the steps, the paperwork and the private options are in Bonbeno's guide to what to do when your pet dies in India.

What a Hyderabad pet owner can do with these numbers

Seven things that follow from the record, in the order a new owner meets them.

1. License the pet on the MyGHMC app. It is free and mandatory, and the corporation has said twice that fines are coming. Keep the pet ID number with the vaccination record.
2. Pick the 24-hour clinic before you need it. Fourteen of the 47 listed clinics publish round-the-clock opening; the Hyderabad vet directory marks them. Phone before you drive.
3. Vaccinate against rabies on schedule and treat every bite as urgent. The Fever Hospital recorded 34 rabies deaths in 2025, and immunoglobulin was missing at most hospitals.
4. Know which corporation you are in. Since 11 February 2026 the west is Cyberabad and the east is Malkajgiri; the centres and the app are the GHMC's.
5. Report an unsterilised dog to the corporation and ask for the notch to be checked. The GHMC says 80 percent are done; its own survey found 75,000 that are not.
6. Buy animals only from a shop that can show its Board certificate. Telangana's register held 86 shops in 2023, and the city had none registered in 2021 Telangana Today, 'Hyderabad; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Know the crematorium. Fathullaguda, run by People for Animals, who set the charge.

What this data does not measure

Each figure here was produced for a different purpose by a different office, and the limits travel with them.

• There is no count of Hyderabad's street dogs, and the sterilised share has never been surveyed. The seven statements in this report are estimates, and the 'over 80 percent' is a claim the corporation has made without publishing a method; the one survey it mentions, with an NGO in 2025, found 20 percent unsterilised and has not been published.
• The bite and rabies figures come from one hospital and from affidavits, not from a city register. The Fever Hospital's 2025 death count was reported as 32 and as 34 two weeks apart; the IDSP table records zero for the state; the report prints all of them with their dates.
• The sterilisation series is two corporation statements that disagree on one year, and the corporation has published nothing for 2024-25 or 2025-26; the dataset stops where the record does.
• Centre capacities and the 7 lakh estimate are from October 2026 reports quoting unnamed officials, and the list of five centres differs between the two reports on its fifth name (Jeedimetla or Serilingampally).
• The licence uptake is the corporation's estimate against its own estimate of the pet population; neither is a count, and nothing says how the two new corporations will license.
• The crematorium's charge is not published. The operator sets it under the MoU; the Gopanpally facility's opening is unreported.
• The directory is a window, not a census. The 47 listings come from a 60-record pull with 13 dropped; the Google Maps pulls are the first 100 results for one search term each, classified by Google's category field, and a 24-hour claim is unverified.

How this report was built

Every figure was read from the document cited, and the Google Maps layer was produced by scripts kept with the report.

1. Dog population statements are from the Deccan Chronicle's reports of 1 March 2023, 31 August 2025 and 5 November 2025, The Siasat Daily's of 21 May 2024, The Hans India's of 4 May 2026 and Hyderabad Mail's of 16 October 2026; the census figure from the Rajya Sabha reply used in Bonbeno's street dog report.
2. Bite and rabies figures are from Indtoday's report of 9 December 2025, The News Minute's of 26 November 2025, Telangana Today's of 26 August 2025 and the Deccan Chronicle's of 31 August 2025; the state series from Annexure I to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025 as published by the Press Information Bureau.
3. The sterilisation series and centre figures are from the Deccan Chronicle of 1 March 2023, The Siasat Daily of 21 May 2024, The Hans India of 18 November 2024, Hyderabad Mail of 16 and 22 October 2026 Hyderabad Mail, 'Hyderabad to get two new… and Telangana Today of 8 October 2023; the Supreme Court order from All India Radio's report of 7 November 2025 and the relocation drive from Siasat and the Deccan Chronicle of 9 November 2025 Deccan Chronicle.
4. The corporation's division is from the Deccan Chronicle and Siasat of 11 February 2026 The Siasat Daily. The licence rules and uptake are from Telangana Today of 21 December 2020 and 14 September 2022 Telangana Today, 'Pet Dog License is…, the Deccan Chronicle of 21 December 2021 and 17 August 2024 Deccan Chronicle, Siasat of 18 August 2024 and Metro India of 10 June 2025. The crematorium is from The News Minute of 5 December 2022. The pet shop record is the set of reports used in Bonbeno's pet shops report LiveLaw, 'Animals Dying In Miserable… Deccan Chronicle. The state veterinary figures are the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha replies used in the Vet Access Index Open Government Data Platform India Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287.
5. The private clinic figures are counts over Bonbeno's Hyderabad directory file as checked on 16 October 2026. The Google Maps layer is three Apify runs of the Google Maps Scraper, 'pet shop' on 1 November 2026 and 'pet grooming' and 'pet boarding' on 2 November 2026, 100 results each, classified by Google's primary category by the summary scripts in the research folder.