Pets in Mumbai, 2026: 90,757 street dogs and 1,54,017 dog bites, a sterilisation programme in its 32nd year, 19 listed clinics with 5 open all night, three municipal pet crematoria, and a dog licence that is law, online-only and enforced by seizure

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

Mumbai publishes more about its dogs than any other Indian city, in pieces. Fourteen figures, from eleven sources.

Two rows carry the weight. Mumbai's street dog count has fallen, slowly, under a sterilisation programme that has run since 1994; and its dog bites have nearly doubled in four years, to the highest annual figure the corporation has ever disclosed. The rest of this report is about how a city that has done the most surgery can still be recording the most bites.

90,757 street dogs, 62.9 percent sterilised: the 2024 survey against the 2014 one

Mumbai is one of the few Indian cities that has counted its street dogs twice by the same method a decade apart. The second count found fewer dogs and, in 18 of 24 wards, a lower share sterilised.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and Humane Society International/India surveyed the city in 2024 along routes averaging 20 to 30 kilometres per ward, about 930 kilometres of Mumbai's 2,354 kilometres of road, and estimated 90,757 street dogs, about 21,000 of them in slums, against 95,172 in 2014, a fall of 4.64 percent in ten years. Density fell from 10.54 dogs per kilometre of road to 8.01, and in slums stood at 224 dogs per square kilometre. Density fell in most wards, with the largest drops in the central wards, and rose in R South, T, N and E.

Across the city 62.9 percent of the dogs seen were sterilised, but the share had fallen in 18 of the 24 wards since 2014: some southern wards topped 80 percent, the central wards sat in the sixties and some northern wards were under 50 percent. The 37.1 percent without the ear notch is 33,671 dogs, and that figure travels oddly through the coverage: the Free Press Journal's reports of April and October 2026 print it as the number that 'had already been sterilised', which the survey's own 62.9 percent contradicts, while its report of 7 October 2026 describes the BMC's approved Rs 23.31 crore plan as one 'to sterilise 33,671 dogs over three years'. The arithmetic supports the second reading, and this report follows the survey. The survey report's own scenario table says what the pace means: at the 2014 to 2024 average of about 14,000 sterilisations a year the population comes under control in 2035 after 1,59,939 more surgeries; at 15,000 a year, in 2031; at 20,000 a year, in 2027 after 74,641; at 10,000 or 13,000 a year, never. The corporation's own estimate of the alternative is a population of 4,48,947 if nothing is done.

Why the two surveys can be compared, and the census cannot

Both Mumbai counts used the same survey design, routes averaging 20 to 30 kilometres per ward driven at dawn by an observer on a two-wheeler, which is why a 4.64 percent fall over ten years is a measurement rather than an impression. Bonbeno's street dog report sets Mumbai beside Bengaluru's 2,79,335 and Chennai's 1.81 lakh, and beside the national census, which asks an enumerator in every ward to estimate and gave Maharashtra 12,76,399 stray dogs in 2019, 5.0 percent more than in 2012. In its November 2025 affidavit to the Supreme Court the BMC put the city's strays at 90,600 and said 1,20,000 had been sterilised in the previous five years.

Dog bites: 1,54,017 cases in 2025, 17 an hour, and a rabies toll that depends on who is counting

The bite series is the one Mumbai number that moves fast. It comes from an RTI reply, and it disagrees with the state's figures in both directions.

Mumbai recorded 1,54,017 dog bite cases in 2025, about 421 a day or 17 an hour, nearly double the 79,252 of 2021, according to the BMC's reply to health activist Chetan Kothari's RTI application: 1,06,797 in 2022, a dip to 61,332 in 2023, then 1,28,252 in 2024. Over the five years the city reported 5,29,650 bites, about 290 a day. The same reply says no deaths from dog bites or from rabies after a bite were reported in Mumbai, without saying for which period. The BMC's own impact report charts human rabies deaths in its hospitals from 2005 to 2023, separating patients from inside and outside the city, and the state health department counted 23 rabies deaths in Maharashtra in 2024, 33 in 2025 and 19 in the first three months of 2026, one of them in Mumbai.

The state's numbers are larger again. Maharashtra's health department recorded 11,41,688 dog bites in 2024, 15,19,913 in 2025 and 4,99,553 in the first quarter of 2026, against the 4,85,345 for 2024 that the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme's annexure laid before the Lok Sabha shows, 381 per lakh of population, the most cases of any state in that table. Mumbai's 1,28,252 for 2024 is therefore either 26 percent of the state's IDSP count or 11 percent of its health department's, and this report prints both rather than choosing. Bonbeno's dog bite report carries every state's IDSP rate.

The vaccination side

Since 2023 the BMC, with Mission Rabies, has vaccinated more than 1,00,000 dogs under its Mumbai Rabies Elimination Campaign, runs 163 anti-rabies vaccination centres across its hospitals and medical colleges for bitten people, and has set 2030 as the year for zero human rabies deaths. By October 2026 the count stood at 1,00,235 dogs vaccinated and 160 centres. A bite that breaks the skin needs the vaccine course the same day; Bonbeno's pet first aid guide and its dog vaccination schedule cover both sides of the needle.

The Animal Birth Control programme: 4,34,529 surgeries since 1994, 14,000 a year on average, and a Rs 23 crore plan to do 45,000

Mumbai's sterilisation programme is the oldest in the country. Its own report says the pace has been too slow for twenty years.

The BMC's Dog Control Unit began sterilising street dogs as a pilot in 1994 and, after the Bombay High Court's directions of 1998, ran the programme through NGOs; by August 2025 it had sterilised 4,34,529 dogs. The annual pace is the problem the survey report names. Between 2014 and 2023 the corporation sterilised 1,48,084 dogs, an average of 14,808 a year, with a high of 24,290 in 2017 and a low of 6,414 in 2015; the earlier years had crossed 30,000 a year from 2008 to 2010 before the decline. In 2024-25 the figure was 25,211, followed by about 12,000 in the next eight months. The cat programme, begun in 2019 after a rise in scratches and bites, had sterilised 24,504 cats by July 2025 through eight NGOs, on budgets of Rs 3 crore for 2020 to 2022 and Rs 6.40 crore for 2023 to 2025.

In April 2026 the BMC announced the largest drive in the programme's history: 45,000 sterilisations in the current financial year and 1,35,000 over three years, at about Rs 23 crore, through nine institutions including the Mumbai Veterinary College at Parel. The nine allocations reported with the plan assign 39,880 dogs for Rs 7.45 crore, between Rs 1,543 and Rs 1,750 a dog for eight of the agencies and Rs 3,490 a dog for the ninth. Six months later the same paper described the approved plan as Rs 23.31 crore to sterilise 33,671 dogs over three years, the survey's unsterilised count, and put the dogs sterilised since 2017 at more than 1.53 lakh; both descriptions are printed here as reported. Set against the survey report's scenarios, 45,000 a year is more than double the 20,000 that would bring the population under control by 2027, and three times the ten-year average that would not do it before 2035.

The Supreme Court and the shelters

The Supreme Court's order of 7 November 2025 told local bodies to move street dogs from institutions and certain public places into permanent shelters, and the BMC's affidavit put the city's strays at 90,600 and the five-year sterilisation total at 1,20,000. By October 2026 the corporation planned to move about 10,000 dogs from restricted areas, had invited expressions of interest from agencies in February 2026, and estimated 28,067 square feet of land to house every 1,000 dogs. Activists questioned where the shelter capacity would come from. The shelter plan sits beside the sterilisation plan, and the second is the one with a budget attached.

Veterinary care: a state network built for livestock, and 19 private clinics of which 5 never close

Maharashtra has more registered vets than any state, and the city's dogs and cats are treated almost entirely outside the government system.

Maharashtra had 11,257 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, more than any other state, and 2,165 of its 5,622 sanctioned doctor posts vacant, 38.5 percent, the largest absolute gap in the country. Its 4,856 government veterinary institutions are mostly aid centres, 2,841 of them, with 1,976 dispensaries and only 39 veterinary hospitals and polyclinics, and its 80 mobile veterinary units cover 0.2 per lakh livestock against the central norm of one. None of this reaches a Mumbai pet owner: Bonbeno's Vet Access Index ranks Maharashtra 15th of 35 on livestock per vet and notes that at most a third of its registered vets hold a state post.

The private layer: where the 24-hour clinics are

Bonbeno's vet directory for Mumbai, each entry checked against its Google listing on 14 October 2026 for an address, a live phone number and the hours the clinic itself publishes, lists 19 clinics, 5 of which publish 24-hour opening: Vetic's clinic in Andheri West, Superpets in Khar, PetZone at Mahalaxmi, the Bombay SPCA's Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals at Parel, and Dynamic Pet Clinic in Wadala. Those are the 24-hour clinics on the list, and all five sit in the island city or the western suburbs; none is in the eastern suburbs. Twelve of the 19 are rated 4.5 or higher and 12,317 Google reviews sit behind an average rating of 4.58, third of the eight cities in the directory, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad, behind Ahmedabad and Hyderabad; Bengaluru lists 18 round-the-clock clinics, Hyderabad 14 and Chennai 2. The Mumbai list is the second shortest of the eight, 19 against Ahmedabad's 17 and Pune's 57, and the limits section says why that is a window on the city and not a count of it.

The Google Maps pulls add a second layer. The 'pet grooming' pull of 2 November 2026 returned 100 listings, 72 of them classed by Google as pet groomers and one as a veterinary clinic, and the 'pet boarding' pull 73 boarding, day-care, kennel or sitter listings. Vetic appears twice in the grooming results. 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, the cleanest 'pet shop' results of any city, and the High Court's unanswered question

Mumbai's pet retail is the most chain-heavy and the best reviewed of the eight cities Bonbeno pulled. Its registration record is a court file.

Of the first 100 Google Maps results for 'pet shop' in Mumbai, 94 are pet stores or pet supply stores, 2 are aquarium shops, 4 are groomers or breeders and none is a non-pet business; none was marked closed, all 100 are rated, the median listing has 103 reviews, the most of any city, 76 percent score 4.5 or higher and 52 percent have a website, the highest share of the eight. Heads Up For Tails appears seven times, with its Bandra West and Prabhadevi stores above a thousand reviews each, and JUSTDOGS twice; only seven listing names advertise live animals, the fewest of any city. Google classes two Mumbai listings as 'Dog breeder', which under the 2017 breeding rules means a registration of their own.

The grooming pull is the same picture: 100 listings, 72 pet groomers, every one rated, a median of 87 reviews, 87 percent at 4.5 or higher, Heads Up For Tails five times, Vetic twice, JUSTDOGS and Zigly once. The boarding pull returned 73 boarding, day-care, kennel or sitter listings and 12 more that Google classes as cat boarding; 88.3 percent of the rated listings score 4.5 or higher, 4 are marked temporarily closed, and 26 claim 24-hour opening, which for a kennel is plausible. Bonbeno's dog grooming cost guide and boarding versus a pet sitter cover the prices and the choice.

Registered pet shops: the number the court asked for in 2021

Every pet shop that sells an animal needs a certificate from the State Animal Welfare Board under the 2018 Rules, and Maharashtra is the one state the Animal Welfare Board of India said in December 2023 had reported on implementing them. How many Mumbai shops hold one is not public. In 2019 the Bombay High Court ordered the immediate closure of illegal pet shops, and on 26 August 2021, hearing Shivraj Patne's public interest litigation, a Bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G.S. Kulkarni asked the state how many shops held valid permits and directed the State Animal Welfare Board to report how many were registered and operating in line with the rules. The BMC's own 2025 guidelines tell owners to buy puppies and kittens, never under eight weeks old, 'from registered pet shops or breeders only'. No figure from the court's exercise has been published, and Bonbeno's pet shops report records the same silence in every state but Tamil Nadu.

The dog licence that is actually mandatory, the online-only process, the housing-society guidelines and the railway rules

Mumbai's pet dog licence is law, is enforced by seizure and is issued without a visit to a ward office. The fee is the part no document states.

A pet dog in Mumbai must be licensed under section 191B of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888, and keeping an unlicensed dog is illegal, the BMC's guidelines of 2025 state. The guidelines themselves separate the two sections: 191A 'makes it mandatory to pay taxes for all the dogs kept within the jurisdiction of Brihanmumbai' and 191B 'provides for granting of license to the owner of a dog or a person in charge of a dog who has paid the taxes levied on such dog'. The corporation's own FAQ on dog licence applications says the application 'is available on BMC's website', that 'Dog license applications are exclusively online' with no need to visit a ward office, that the licence 'is computer generated, and does not require any signature' and arrives by email with the payment receipt, that an Aadhaar, PAN, GST or voter number is not required, that attachments must be PDF or JPG under 2 MB, and that renewal, alteration and cancellation each have their own form on the MCGM portal. Under section 191B(3) the corporation can seize an unlicensed dog, and the owner has three days to claim it; that seizure is the penalty, since no fine is stated in any document this report could read.

The fees are the gap. The 2019 guidelines set Rs 105 for the licence and Rs 100 a year to renew, and in May 2022 the Free Press Journal reported that 'the renewal rate has been hiked to Rs 700 this year' while the new portal refused payments; the FAQ the corporation publishes does not state a fee, and no fee schedule was found on the portal on 2 November 2026. How many Mumbai dogs are licensed is not published either, and pet cats need no licence, because section 191B and the FAQ speak of dogs only. Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India keeps the portal link.

Housing societies: the March 2025 guidelines

The BMC's Veterinary Health Department guidelines for pet and street dogs, feeders, resident welfare associations and apartment owners associations, signed by the Municipal Commissioner on 20 March 2025, say that 'it is illegal for a housing society to pass pet bye laws that disallow pets', that trying to ban pets 'or limit their number, is against the fundamental freedom', that a society 'may insist for pet dog license issued by BMC', that owners 'must keep vaccination records' and should declare their pets to the association with the licence copy, and that a society may set 'time slots, when the pets can access gardens, parks and grounds'. Feeding street dogs and cats is lawful at designated spots and harassing feeders is an offence; leashing in public is 'advisable' in the guidelines' own word, and an owner whose dog defecates in a public place must clean up. This is what the corporation's 2022 licensing drive called responsible pet ownership, written down. Bonbeno's guide to pets in apartments in India reads the BMC clauses beside the AWBI guideline they follow and Bengaluru's copy of them.

Promenades, trains and the metro

The public-space rules are mostly about who may make them. In March 2026 the H-West ward removed several banners and signboards along Bandra Bandstand that warned, under the BMC's own logo, of heavy fines for feeding animals, after animal welfare activist Shiraz Ahmad complained; the residents' trust alleged to have put them up enforces a 'No Pets' rule along the whole promenade while being authorised to manage only a small garden on it, and pet owners protested there on 28 March. On the railways the rule is central and written: Indian Railways' luggage rules allow a dog in AC First and First Class compartments only with fellow passengers' agreement, charged at luggage rates on 60 kilograms, or in the brake van's dog box on 30 kilograms at a minimum of Rs 10; dogs 'are not allowed to be carried in' AC sleeper, AC chair car, sleeper and second class coaches, an unbooked dog is charged six times the luggage rate with a minimum of Rs 50, and the owner must provide the collar, chain, food and water. Bonbeno's metro guide covers what each city's metro, Mumbai's included, allows.

When a pet dies: three municipal crematoria, the first free, the other two ordered by the High Court

Mumbai went from no municipal pet crematorium to three in thirty months, with a suo motu petition in between.

The BMC inaugurated its first pet crematorium, an incinerator at the cattle and dog pound in Evershine Nagar, Malad West, in September 2023: a 50-kilogram-an-hour unit on piped natural gas, free of charge, open 10 am to 6 pm daily, for pets with an owner's address proof, built under a Rs 17 crore contract for three units including five years of operation; the corporation had decided in 2018 to build at Malad, Deonar and Mahalaxmi. In June 2025 the Bombay High Court took suo motu cognisance of a report on the delayed Deonar facility, and on 9 July 2025 the BMC told the court that Mahalaxmi was already functional, that Deonar was still under construction and that Malad was available, and was given two weeks to file an affidavit.

Deonar and Mahalaxmi have been operational since 1 April 2026, the corporation announced: Deonar on PNG for animals up to 500 kilograms, Mahalaxmi fully electric for animals up to 50 kilograms, both booked online at the Veterinary Health Department's portal or through a helpline. A pet cremated at Malad costs its owner nothing; the April 2026 announcement names no charge for the other two. Bonbeno's guide to what to do when your pet dies in India covers the steps, the paperwork and the private options with their prices.

What a Mumbai 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 dog, online, with the vaccination record ready. It is mandatory under section 191B, the process is online only, and an unlicensed dog can be seized. Keep the emailed licence; a society may ask for it.
2. Pick the 24-hour clinic before you need it. Five of the 19 listed clinics publish round-the-clock opening, at Andheri West, Khar, Mahalaxmi, Parel and Wadala; the Mumbai vet directory marks them. Phone before you drive.
3. Vaccinate against rabies on schedule and treat every bite as urgent. The city runs about 160 anti-rabies vaccination centres and recorded 17 bites an hour in 2025.
4. Use the March 2025 guidelines, which are in force. A society cannot ban your pet or limit the number; it can set garden time slots and ask for the licence.
5. On a train, book First or AC First, or the dog box. The rule is central, the charge is on 60 or 30 kilograms, and an unbooked dog costs six times the rate.
6. Buy animals only from a shop that can show its Board certificate. The High Court asked in 2021 how many Mumbai shops have one, and the answer has not been published; the pet shops report lists what to ask.
7. Know the three crematoria. Malad is free and open 10 to 6; Deonar and Mahalaxmi take online bookings.

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 Mumbai's pet dogs or cats, and no published count of licences issued. The licence is mandatory and online, so the corporation holds the number; this report could not find it in any document.
• The bite series is an RTI reply, and the state counts differ from it and from each other. The BMC's five-year figures, the state health department's totals and the IDSP annexure before the Lok Sabha are three systems; the report prints all three with their dates and does not reconcile them.
• The 2024 survey's coverage is stated two ways. OpenCity and the Free Press Journal give about 930 of 2,354 kilometres of road; the report's own ward table lists 494.7 kilometres of survey track, 21 percent of street length, and neither explains the difference. The sterilised share is the share of dogs seen with an ear notch, which records a past surgery and not a current vaccination. The 2014 comparison holds because the method was the same.
• The 2026 plan is described two ways. The April report gives 45,000 a year, 1,35,000 over three years and Rs 23 crore, with nine allocations that sum to 39,880 dogs and Rs 7.45 crore; the October report gives Rs 23.31 crore to sterilise 33,671 dogs over three years. The report prints both and does not know what the difference covers.
• The licence fee is reported, not documented. Rs 105 and Rs 100 come from the 2019 guidelines as the Free Press Journal reported them; the Rs 700 renewal is the same paper's report of May 2022; the corporation's FAQ states no fee.
• The directory is a window, not a census. Mumbai's 19 listings are the second fewest of the eight cities because the pull on 14 October 2026 returned 20 records, the smallest of the eight; 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.
• The government veterinary figures are state totals; no document this report could reach splits Maharashtra's institutions or vacancies by district, and the BMC's own small-animals hospital at Mahalaxmi is named in the crematorium reports and nowhere else this report could reach.

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. The 2024 survey figures were read from OpenCity's analysis of the BMC and Humane Society International report and the report itself, whose ward survey-track table and sterilisation scenario table carry a text layer; the 2014 to 2023 sterilisation figures from the Free Press Journal's report of 7 April 2025.
2. Dog bite figures are the BMC's RTI reply as reported by the Free Press Journal on 23 October 2026; the state figures from Mumbai Live's report of 27 April 2026; the IDSP figure from the Press Information Bureau's publication of 1 April 2025 as used in Bonbeno's dog bite report.
3. The 2026 plan and its agency allocations are from the Free Press Journal's report of 14 April 2026; rupees per dog were computed by Bonbeno. The cat programme from the report of 19 August 2025, the vaccination campaign from 27 September 2025, the Supreme Court affidavit from ETV Bharat's report of 13 November 2025 and the shelter plan from the Free Press Journal of 7 October 2026.
4. The licence rules are from the BMC's own FAQ on the portal, its 2025 guidelines as summarised by the Free Press Journal and read in the original, the Free Press Journal of 27 May 2022 for the fees and Citizen Matters of 12 January 2022 for seizure and the offices. The railway rules are Indian Railways' own luggage rules page.
5. The crematoria are from the Free Press Journal's reports of 15 September 2023 and 16 April 2026 and PTI's of 9 July 2025; the Bandstand episode from the Free Press Journal of 27 March 2026. The state veterinary figures are the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha replies used in the Vet Access Index.
6. The private clinic figures are counts over Bonbeno's Mumbai directory file as checked on 14 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.