Stray dogs in Arunachal Pradesh, 2026: 11,383 counted in 2019 against 464 in 2012, 6,388 dog bites in the national table for 2024, one rabies death in that table against four the state's own officers counted by May, 117 bites in a week in Itanagar, two ABC centres opened in July 2026, a village that voted to shoot its dogs, and the wild dogs that kill mithun

Stray dogs in Arunachal Pradesh: the state's numbers on one page

Arunachal Pradesh is thinly documented, and two of its official counts disagree with what its own officers say. Sixteen rows, each with its date and source.

Two rows carry the weight. The national table recorded one rabies death in Arunachal Pradesh in 2024, while the state's own Directorate of Health Services reported four suspected rabies deaths that year by the middle of May. The rest of this report is about a small state whose dog numbers are mostly news reports of what officials said, and where every official count is lower than the officials' own account.

How many stray dogs Arunachal Pradesh has: 11,383 in the census, from 464

The census count multiplied by twenty-four in seven years, and no city in the state has counted its dogs.

Arunachal Pradesh had 11,383 stray dogs in the 20th Livestock Census of 2019, against 464 in the 19th Census of 2012, and 659 stray cattle. A rise of 2,353 percent in seven years, while India's count fell 10.7 percent, may say more about the census than the dogs: the census asks one informant per village or ward, and Bonbeno's street dog report lists Arunachal's jump beside Delhi's identical count in both rounds and Dadra and Nagar Haveli's fall to zero as artefacts of that method. On the 2019 figure the state has 7.6 stray dogs per 1,000 people, below India's 11.5, Karnataka's 17.3 and Maharashtra's 10.4 and above Tamil Nadu's 5.8 and Delhi's 3.1. No count or estimate of Itanagar's street dogs could be found published, and the state's own animal husbandry officers described 'the increasing number of stray dogs in the streets of the state capital and the district headquarters' without a figure. The 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 11 November 2026.

Dogs and wildlife: snow leopard country and a bitten crane

The state's first statewide snow leopard survey, run by the Department of Environment, Forest and Climate Change with WWF-India from 24 June to 9 December 2021 at 115 camera locations and reported in October 2024, found that 'the development of large-scale infrastructure and free-ranging dogs seriously threatens the wildlife' in high-elevation areas of the West Kameng and Tawang districts. In March 2025 a team led by a senior veterinary officer rescued a black-necked crane in the Chug valley of Dirang, West Kameng, that had 'suffered multiple traumatic injuries of dog bite'. Free-ranging dogs in Arunachal are therefore a wildlife question as well as a public health one, in a way they are not in Mumbai or Chennai, and in July 2026 Tawang's traders asked the district administration for 'stringent measures' against stray dogs in the market.

Dog bites and rabies: 6,388 bites in the table, and deaths the table does not see

Arunachal Pradesh's bite count rose two and a half times in two years, and its own officers counted more rabies deaths than the national table holds.

The IDSP table laid before the Lok Sabha gives Arunachal Pradesh 2,501 dog bites in 2022, 4,409 in 2023, 6,388 in 2024 and 714 in January 2025, with suspected human rabies deaths of 0, 0, 1 and 0. Against a projected 15.76 lakh people, 2024's bites are 405.3 per lakh, above India's 265.7, Maharashtra's 381.1 and Kerala's 320.3 though below Karnataka's 530.7 and Tamil Nadu's 623.2, and the 155 percent rise from 2022 is more than twice India's 69.7 percent; Bonbeno's dog bite report prints the series for every state. In the second week of May 2024 the Itanagar Capital Region recorded 117 dog bites in one week, and the Deputy Commissioner, Shweta Nagarkoti Mehta, ordered owners to confine aggressive dogs within 15 days or face 'eviction' of the pets, keep pets on a leash, and asked the Itanagar Municipal Corporation to work with the Lekhi-based NGO Arunachal Dog and Cat Rescue to capture strays; by 29 May the mayor, Tamme Phassang, put the capital at 'around 20 cases related to dog bites' a day. No state source gives an annual bite total, so the table's 6,388 is the only yearly figure in print. A 2025 geospatial study built on the government's Health Management Information System data for 2018 to 2023, a third instrument, placed Arunachal Pradesh in the lowest band of absolute dog bite cases in 2018 and again in 2021, 2022 and 2023; a small state's count is low in absolute terms and high per person, and both readings are true.

Rabies: one death in the table, four in the state's count

On 6 March 2024 the state's health officials told The Arunachal Times that 'six cases of rabies related deaths have been reported here in the state of Arunachal Pradesh since September 2023': two from Itanagar, one from Leparada district and three from Seppa in East Kameng; two had followed a dog scratch the patient neglected, and two of the six were in 2023. On 17 May 2024 the Director of Health Services, Dr Riken Rina, reviewed the bite surge and the National Rabies Control Programme's state office said that 'the four suspected rabies deaths reported in 2024 occurred as the individuals did not seek medical attention'. The IDSP table holds zero for 2023 and one for 2024. The two are printed side by side and not reconciled: one is a surveillance return, the other what the programme's own officers counted. The deaths behind them are named in the press: Nyaro Rusing, an 18-year-old student of Don Bosco College at Jullang, died on 14 September 2023 after being bitten by a puppy that itself died days later, and a 26-year-old man from Chandranagar died at TRIHMS on 4 March 2024 after his pet dog scratched him in December 2023. The same May 2024 release said rabies had been notifiable in the state since 14 February 2022, that 'over 97% of state's animal bite cases now receive PEP', that three model anti-rabies clinics ran at TRIHMS in Naharlagun, BPGH in Pasighat and GTGH in Ziro, and that 'the current vaccine procurement and cold chain space are insufficient for all districts'. Across India, the ICMR estimates 5,726 rabies deaths a year against the 54 the national table recorded in 2024; Arunachal's own count shows the same gap at the scale of one state.

Compensation: nothing for a dog bite, Rs 40,000 for a mithun

Arunachal Pradesh has no published scheme for a person bitten by a dog, and a growing one for a mithun killed by wild dogs.

No Arunachal Pradesh scheme or court order fixing compensation for a dog bite could be found, and no dog-bite formula from the Gauhati High Court, whose Itanagar bench serves the state, could be found of the kind the Punjab and Haryana High Court set in 2023. On 13 January 2026 the Supreme Court said, through Justice Vikram Nath, 'we are going to ask the state governments to pay heavy compensation' for dog bite deaths and injuries 'as they did not do anything on implementation of norms in the past five years'; no amount for Arunachal followed in what could be read.

The other 'wild dogs': dholes and mithun

In Arunachal headlines, 'wild dogs' usually means dholes, the Asiatic wild dog, and the loss is mithun, the state's semi-domesticated cattle. Around Doimukh and Gumto in Papum Pare, 'more than 30 mithuns have been killed by wild dogs', farmers put the Doimukh total at 40 to 50, and claims were being rejected by the forest department in April 2025; in February 2025 the Pakke Tiger Reserve raised its ex gratia for a mithun killed by wild dogs from Rs 10,000 to Rs 40,000, which farmers said should be at least Rs 1 lakh. In September 2025 the Tani Ao Mithun Farmers' Welfare Society asked for 'a legislation to control wild dog predation on mithun', a divisional forest officer discouraged hunting them, and the society's chairman said 91 percent of India's 3,90,000 mithun in the 2019 mithun census are in Arunachal Pradesh. A dhole is a wild animal, not a stray dog, and none of this report's stray dog figures include it; the confusion is worth knowing before reading any Arunachal 'dog attack' story.

The Animal Birth Control programme and the courts: two centres in 2026, and a village that voted to cull

Arunachal Pradesh decided to sterilise its stray dogs in 2024 and opened its first centres two years later.

On 20 May 2024, after the capital's bite surge, a meeting chaired by the Animal Husbandry, Veterinary and Dairy Development Commissioner, Bidol Tayeng, decided 'to control the stray dog population by capturing and sterilising them', with stray dogs to be caught and confined by the authorities or NGOs; the only shelter named, Arunachal Dog and Cat Rescue in Naharlagun, 'currently houses about 17 stray dogs'. The department vaccinated more than 400 stray and pet dogs in the capital by early June 2024, 155 of them on the Rajiv Gandhi University campus, and ran a free mass anti-rabies vaccination from Jollang to Chimpu on 19 August 2025. On 6 July 2026, World Zoonoses Day, the Animal Husbandry minister, Gabriel D Wangsu, inaugurated an Animal Birth Control centre at Ganga in Itanagar and virtually opened 'a similar centre at Namsai to extend the facility to eastern Arunachal Pradesh', with a week-long anti-rabies vaccination and ABC awareness campaign The Arunachal Times. No capacity, sterilisation count or cost per dog has been published for either centre, and no earlier ABC centre in the state could be found in print; the Supreme Court's order of 19 May 2026 asks every state for at least one fully functional ABC centre in every district, and Arunachal has two.

The courts, and what Bene village did

The Gauhati High Court registered suo motu case WP(C)(Suo Moto)/2/2026 to monitor the Supreme Court's stray dog orders in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland, with state affidavits due by 7 August 2026; by 29 August the bench of Chief Justice Ashutosh Kumar and Justice Arun Dev Choudhury recorded that for Arunachal Pradesh 'compliance reports have been submitted in the prescribed format', and listed the case for 11 November 2026. The court also reportedly told Arunachal and four other states to keep stray cattle and dogs off major roads and highways. Above it sit the Supreme Court's order of 7 November 2025 on schools, hospitals and stations and its refusal on 19 May 2026 to let dogs picked up from public places be released after sterilisation. In September 2025 the residents of Bene, a village 10 km from Aalo in West Siang, resolved at a meeting on 8 September to cull their dogs from 15 September, fearing rabies; the Deputy Commissioner, Liyi Bagra, instructed the district's judicial branch 'to restrict the culling of dogs', and the Arunachal Animal Welfare Society and Pawpal Itanagar asked instead for mass vaccination and sterilisation India Today NE (Yuvraj Mehta). The welfare groups' letter cited the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 and the Supreme Court's directives against killing dogs. No report of the resolution being formally withdrawn, or of any dog actually culled, was found.

Veterinary care: 245 vets, no vacant post, and no college

Arunachal Pradesh has more registered vets per person than Kerala and trains none of them at home.

Arunachal Pradesh had 245 registered veterinary practitioners on 31 March 2024, up from 201 in 2021, and none of its 176 sanctioned government veterinary doctor posts was vacant in December 2025, against 25.8 percent vacant across India. Its 25 operational mobile veterinary units are 2.2 per lakh livestock against India's 0.7, and with 11,61,428 livestock in the 2019 census the state has 4,741 livestock per registered vet against India's 6,106, and 15.5 vets per lakh people, above Kerala's 15.0, Maharashtra's 8.8, Tamil Nadu's 8.6, Karnataka's 7.5 and Delhi's 2.7. The Veterinary Council of India's list has no recognised veterinary college in Arunachal Pradesh; the nearest are at Guwahati in Assam and Aizawl in Mizoram, 100 seats each. The private layer is thin: in August 2024 KM Veterinary Hospital in Itanagar was described as 'the only private veterinary hospital in Arunachal Pradesh', with cats now 60 percent of the pets it registers. Bonbeno's Vet Access Index ranks every state on the same arithmetic. Bonbeno's vet directories cover eight cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Ahmedabad) and none in the northeast; what a consultation costs is in Bonbeno's guide to what a vet visit costs in India.

Pets and the rules: registration without a fee, no shop register, and the dog meat question

Itanagar has made dog registration compulsory on paper, and the rest of the state's pet rules could not be found in print.

On 29 May 2024 the Itanagar mayor said 'the new regulation mandates the registration of dogs' and that owners must register how many pets they own, and the capital's June 2024 vaccination drive named a nodal officer for registration and control of pets. No fee, portal or count of registered dogs could be read, so a pet owner cannot yet compare Itanagar's rule with the licence fees larger cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad publish; Bonbeno's guide to dog registration in India covers the portals that exist. No register of pet shops or breeders in Arunachal Pradesh could be found, though the Pet Shop Rules require a State Animal Welfare Board certificate for each.

Dog meat, native breeds and end of life

No order banning the dog meat trade in Arunachal Pradesh was found. Nagaland's ban of 4 July 2020 was set aside by the Gauhati High Court's Kohima bench in 2023, which held that 'the Chief Secretary was not the appropriate authority to issue the impugned order', and Humane Society International wrote in 2020 that the trade continues in 'at least four states in northeastern India, including Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh'. In April 2020, during the lockdown, volunteers feeding about 200 dogs in the capital reported at least 50 missing in a few days, and The Arunachal Times wrote that 'the dogs may have been eaten in the absence of meat in the market'; no count since has been published. No dog breed from Arunachal Pradesh is on ICAR's register of Indian breeds, and the dog on most of the state's roads is the Indian pariah dog; Bonbeno's report on the register carries the six. No pet crematorium in the state could be found.

What an Arunachal Pradesh pet owner can do with these numbers

Six things that follow from the record, in the order an owner meets them.

1. Vaccinate your dog and cat against rabies every year, free. The government provides free vaccination for all dogs, its animal husbandry director said in 2024, and the minister asked owners to vaccinate every year.
2. Treat a scratch like a bite. Two of the six deaths the state counted from September 2023 followed a neglected scratch.
3. Know your nearest anti-rabies clinic. TRIHMS in Naharlagun, BPGH in Pasighat and the general hospital in Ziro.
4. Register your dog in Itanagar and keep it on a leash outside. Both were required in May 2024 The Arunachal Times (PTI).
5. Report a dangerous dog; do not harm it. West Siang's Deputy Commissioner restricted Bene's cull in 2025.
6. Ask the Ganga centre in Itanagar or the Namsai centre about sterilisation. Both opened in July 2026.

What this data does not measure

Arunachal Pradesh's record is thin, and most of its figures are what an official said to a newspaper.

• The dog count is a 2019 census, and its method may explain much of the rise from 464 to 11,383, and no city survey exists. The 21st Livestock Census had published no state table by 11 November 2026.
• No state source gives an annual dog bite total. The IDSP table is the only yearly series; 117 in a week and 20 a day are capital-region snapshots from May 2024.
• The rabies deaths are two instruments. The state's counts are officials quoted in the press, not a published register; the IDSP figures are surveillance returns. Neither is adjusted to the other.
• The ABC centres at Ganga and Namsai have published no capacity, sterilisation count or cost per dog.
• No compensation scheme for a dog bite, no pet licence fee, no pet shop register and no Itanagar High Court bench order on dogs were found.
• The mithun figures are the farmers' and one reserve's, not a statewide count of dhole kills, and the 91 percent share is a farmers' society chairman's reading of the 2019 mithun census.
• Dog meat is unmeasured. No ban, survey or seizure count for Arunachal Pradesh was found; the 2020 lockdown report is volunteers' observation.

How this report was built

Every figure was read from the document cited, and the state rows are the same rows Bonbeno's national reports computed from the parliamentary annexes.

1. The census figures are from the Rajya Sabha statement of 6 August 2025, with per-1,000 rates as computed in Bonbeno's street dog report; the bite and rabies figures from Annexure I and II to the Lok Sabha reply of 1 April 2025 the WHO India page and the Porto Biomedical Journal study.
2. The state's rabies and bite figures are from The Arunachal Times The Arunachal Times (PTI) The Arunachal Times, the Arunachal Observer and The Sentinel The Sentinel, 'Arunachal Health department….
3. The programme and court figures are from The Arunachal Times The Arunachal Times The Arunachal Times The Arunachal Times, 'Fearing rabies The Arunachal Times (PTI), ThePrint, The Sentinel The Sentinel, 'Gauhati HC to Monitor SC's… The Sentinel, 'Gauhati HC directs… The Sentinel, 'Gauhati High Court, India Today NE, the Supreme Court's order and News On AIR.
4. The wildlife and mithun figures are from The Sentinel and The Arunachal Times The Arunachal Times The Arunachal Times (Indu Chukhu) The Arunachal Times; the veterinary figures from the Lok Sabha replies Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 1287 Lok Sabha, Unstarred Question 4449, the VCI list and The Arunachal Times.
5. The dog meat record is from LiveLaw, Humane Society International and The Arunachal Times. The People Also Ask questions were captured on 11 November 2026 through an Apify run of Google's India results; 'stray dogs in arunachal pradesh' and 'dog bite cases in arunachal pradesh' returned no box, and 'stray dogs in itanagar' returned four.