Dog bites in India by state, 2022 to 2025: 37 lakh reported cases, 54 reported rabies deaths, and the 5,726 the surveys say really happen

Dog bites reported in India, 2022 to 2025: the numbers Parliament was given

India counts dog bites through the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, which records every animal bite presented at a reporting health facility, and the Ministry of Health lays the state table before Parliament when asked. The series below is the one laid on 1 April 2025.

Reported dog bites rose from 21,89,909 in 2022 to 30,52,521 in 2023 and 37,15,713 in 2024, a rise of 69.7 percent in two years, and January 2025 alone recorded 4,29,664. Three months later the same ministry gave the Lok Sabha a 2024 figure of 37,17,336, 1,623 higher, because the surveillance portal is live and states keep entering cases after the year closes. An RTI reply from the National Centre for Disease Control, published in February 2026 with the portal read on 29 January 2026, put 2024 at 37,17,341 and 2025 at 47,48,478, a further rise of 27.7 percent.

Three things are true of this series at once. The count is real: these are people who walked into a government facility with a bite and were entered on a portal. The growth is partly reporting: 2022 was the year the platform's coverage widened, and several states show jumps no dog population could produce, which the next sections set out. And the count is a floor: the only national survey that asked households directly found far more bites than the portal records, which is the comparison this report exists to make.

Where the bites are reported: every state's rate per lakh people

A case count favours big states, so the dataset divides each state's 2024 cases by its projected 2024 population from the National Commission on Population. The result reorders the map.

India as a whole reported 265.7 bites per lakh people in 2024. Tamil Nadu led the large states at 623.2, followed by Gujarat at 542.8, Karnataka at 530.7 and, less expectedly, Meghalaya at 526.3 and Assam at 461.2. Maharashtra, home to Mumbai and Pune, reports the most cases of any state at 4,85,345 and sits in the middle at 381.1 because it is also the second most populous state. At the bottom are Uttar Pradesh at 68.9, Punjab at 74.1 and West Bengal, Kolkata included, at 76.8: three states with large populations and, between them, about 35 lakh street dogs in the 2019 census.

The small union territories report the highest rates of all: Ladakh 1,350 per lakh, Sikkim 1,238, Goa 1,089, Puducherry 722 and Chandigarh 695. A reader should not conclude that Goa's dogs are five times as dangerous as Maharashtra's. A territory with one or two reporting hospitals, a small population and a tourist influx produces a high ratio for arithmetical reasons, and the census stray counts for these places are themselves small. The pattern to take from the top of the table is the one the next section explains.

Why the state ranking measures reporting as much as it measures dogs

Four comparisons inside the official tables show that the gap between states is mostly a gap in what reaches the portal, which is underreporting by another name.

Kerala multiplied its count 29 times in two years

Kerala reported 4,000 dog bites in 2022 and 1,15,046 in 2024, a rise of 2,776 percent. No state's dogs do that. Kerala's 2022 figure is a round number that reads as a placeholder, and its 2023 figure of 71,606 is the year its facilities began reporting in earnest. The 2022 base for the national 69.7 percent rise is therefore soft in Kerala, Jharkhand (plus 359.9 percent), Assam (plus 316.4 percent), Delhi (plus 276.8 percent) and West Bengal (plus 238.0 percent), and part of the national rise is those states switching on.

Uttar Pradesh fell while every other large state rose

Uttar Pradesh reported 1,91,361 bites in 2022, 2,29,921 in 2023 and 1,64,009 in 2024, a fall of 14.3 percent across the period and 28.7 percent in the final year, while the country rose 21.7 percent in that year. With 20.6 lakh street dogs, the largest count of any state in the 2019 census, and the largest human population, Uttar Pradesh's rate of 68.9 per lakh is one-ninth of Tamil Nadu's. Either Uttar Pradesh has solved a problem no other state has, or its facilities are not entering cases. The 2025 RTI reading, which lists the top states without Uttar Pradesh among them, points the same way.

Bites per hundred street dogs run from 109 to 8

Dividing each state's 2024 bites by its 2019 census count of street dogs gives Tamil Nadu 108.9 bites per 100 street dogs, Meghalaya 166.9, Sikkim 80.4 and Assam 77.7, against Uttar Pradesh 8.0, Punjab 7.9, West Bengal 6.7 and Odisha 9.6. A fourteen-fold spread in bites per dog is not a difference in dog behaviour. It is a difference in which bites get counted, compounded by a census that counts street dogs by household enumerators and under-reads cities.

The household survey found 9.1 million bites, not 3.7 million

The ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology surveyed 78,807 households in 60 districts across 15 states between March 2022 and August 2023 and measured an annual animal-bite incidence of 6.6 per 1,000 people, which it translated into 9.1 million bites a year nationally, 76.8 percent of them by dogs. That implies about 7.0 million dog bites a year. The portal recorded 37.2 lakh in 2024, so the official count captured roughly half of the dog bites the survey says occur, and that is before the survey's own under-recall of minor bites is allowed for. A separate 2023 to 2024 household study in two Delhi municipal zones measured 25.5 dog bites per 1,000 people a year, against Delhi's reported 1.2 per 1,000 for 2024.

Rabies deaths: 54 reported, 5,726 estimated

The deaths column of the same Lok Sabha table is the number that has drawn the most criticism, and the arithmetic explains why.

States reported 21 suspected human rabies deaths in 2022, 50 in 2023 and 54 in 2024. The ICMR-NIE study, using the same household survey and a probability decision-tree model, estimated 5,726 human rabies deaths a year, with a 95 percent uncertainty interval of 3,967 to 7,350. The reported figure is 0.9 percent of the estimate. The World Health Organization's India office cites the same 5,726, and notes it is a substantial decline from the estimated 20,000 deaths a year of two decades ago, so the trend is real even though the official count is not.

Delhi is the clearest case. The Lok Sabha was told that no human rabies death was recorded in Delhi between January 2022 and January 2025, and an RTI reply from Maharshi Valmiki Infectious Diseases Hospital, the capital's dedicated infectious disease facility under the municipal corporation, gave 18 deaths in the same years: six in 2022, two in 2023 and ten in 2024. One hospital in one city held more rabies deaths than the national table recorded for the city, which is the mechanism behind the 54: a death is counted only if a reporting facility enters it as rabies, and most rabies deaths in India happen at home, after a patient is sent away, or under another diagnosis. An epidemiologist who has worked on rabies in Himachal Pradesh for two decades put the true figure closer to 10,000 a year.

Maharashtra reports more rabies deaths than any other state, 35 in three years, and also reports more bites than any other state, which is consistent with a state whose surveillance works rather than a state whose dogs are more dangerous. Telangana, with Hyderabad, and Delhi reported no rabies deaths at all in three years, and the Delhi RTI shows what that zero is worth.

What happens after a bite: the vaccine gap the surveys measured

Rabies is prevented by post-exposure prophylaxis, and the household surveys measured how much of it people actually receive.

• One in five dog-bite victims received no anti-rabies vaccine at all. In the ICMR-NIE survey 323 of the 1,576 people bitten by a dog, 20.5 percent, did not receive the vaccine.
• Half of those who started did not finish. Of the 1,253 who received a first dose, 615, or 49.1 percent, did not complete the course, and only 66.2 percent received at least three doses.
• Guideline-complete treatment is rarer still. In the Delhi household study, 73.5 percent of bite victims completed the vaccine regimen but only 32.4 percent received post-exposure prophylaxis fully according to national guidelines, because the immunoglobulin that a deep, bleeding category III bite also needs was given to about a quarter of those who needed it.
• Almost everyone did reach a facility. About 98 percent of the Delhi bite victims visited at least one health facility and two-thirds used only public ones, so the gap is in completing treatment, not in starting it.

The schedule a bitten person should expect is the WHO intradermal or intramuscular course on days 0, 3, 7 and 14 to 28, with rabies immunoglobulin infiltrated into a category III wound on day 0, and the Government of India's own programme stocks the vaccine at district hospitals and model anti-rabies clinics. The practical rule for a pet owner is the same as for anyone: the wound is washed for 15 minutes first, the first dose is the same day, and the course is finished even if the dog looks well. The page on rabies in dogs in India sets out the categories and the ten-day observation rule, and pet first aid at home covers the wound.

1. Wash for 15 minutes with soap under running water, before anything else.
2. Go the same day to a facility that stocks anti-rabies vaccine; a government district hospital or model anti-rabies clinic will have it, in Chennai or Bengaluru or a district town, and the ICMR survey found the public system is where two-thirds of victims already go.
3. Ask whether the bite is category III, meaning any bleeding puncture, multiple bites or a bite on the head, neck or hand, because that category needs immunoglobulin in the wound as well as the vaccine.
4. Finish the course. Half of Indian bite victims who start do not, and the doses on days 7 and 14 to 28 are the ones they miss.

The pet dog's share, and what an owner is responsible for

A bite report does not say whether the dog was owned, so the only measure of the pet dog's share is the household survey, and it is larger than the public debate assumes.

Of the 1,576 dog bites in the ICMR-NIE sample, 614 were by pet dogs, 39 percent, and only about 50 percent of dog owners said their dog was vaccinated against rabies. Applied to the survey's national estimate, that is on the order of 2.7 million bites a year by owned dogs, roughly as many as the whole official count of dog bites for 2023. The street-dog debate that dominates coverage of these numbers leaves out the one population an owner controls.

Every municipal pet licence in India requires a current rabies vaccination, and the vaccine is cheap and annual. Dog vaccination schedule for India gives the timing, registering a dog in India lists the city licences, and the page on reading your dog's body language covers the warning signs that precede most owned-dog bites. For children, who the IDSP data and the ICMR survey both show are bitten disproportionately, teaching children how to meet a dog is the preventive page.

The plan: NAPRE 2030, the ABC Rules 2023, and what Parliament was told is being done

India has committed to the global target of zero human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030, and the measures behind that commitment are a matter of record.

The National Action Plan for Dog Mediated Rabies Elimination by 2030, NAPRE, was unveiled on World Rabies Day, 28 September 2021, by the Union health and animal husbandry ministers, built on sustained mass dog vaccination, pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis and public education, and the health ministry's programme page records that about 96 percent of rabies mortality is associated with dog bites. The plan document itself, published by the National Centre for Disease Control, is the template from which Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya and Mizoram have written state plans.

On the animal side, the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023 replaced the 2001 rules and require local bodies to sterilise and vaccinate street dogs and return them to where they were caught; the government told the Lok Sabha in April 2025 that it has not formally assessed the programme's effectiveness, and cited one municipal study, Bengaluru's, which found a 10 percent fall in the street dog population between its 2019 and 2023 surveys as sterilisation coverage rose 20 percent. In July 2025 the ministry listed Rs 3,535.86 lakh spent over five years on anti-rabies vaccine procurement under the ASCAD scheme, model anti-rabies clinics, a Rabies-Free City initiative and an advisory that municipalities count their street dogs annually.

What the plan does not yet have is a death count it can be measured against. A target of zero deaths, monitored through a system that recorded 54 of an estimated 5,726, will be met on paper long before it is met in fact. The ICMR-NIE authors say as much: to eliminate dog-mediated human rabies by 2030, India needs to fast-track its actions under a focused one-health approach. The guide to free-ranging dogs in India explains the ABC rules from the resident's side, and feeding community dogs in India the feeder's.

How this report was built

Three public tables and one survey, combined with arithmetic that is stated so it can be checked.

1. Dog bite cases and rabies deaths are Annexure I and Annexure II of the reply to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 4870, published by the Press Information Bureau on 1 April 2025: state-wise IDSP-IHIP figures for 2022, 2023, 2024 and January 2025. The 36 state and UT rows were copied as published; the all-India totals are the table's own.
2. Population is the National Commission on Population's projected total population as on 1 March 2024, in thousands, from its 2011 to 2036 projections report, Table 8. Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, which IDSP reports as one UT, is the sum of the report's two rows.
3. Street dogs are the 20th Livestock Census (2019) state table laid before the Rajya Sabha on 6 August 2025. Ladakh is not separated from Jammu and Kashmir in that table and the merged UT is not reported, so those cells are blank.
4. Rates are cases divided by population, expressed per lakh (cases multiplied by 100, divided by population in thousands), and bites per 100 street dogs are 2024 cases multiplied by 100 and divided by the 2019 count. Where the 2019 count is under 1,000 dogs (Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, Lakshadweep) the ratio is left blank, because a census cell that small is not a denominator.
5. The survey figures are from the ICMR-NIE community-based survey and modelling study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, read from the journal's abstract, and from the press reports of the same survey for the pet-dog share and owner vaccination rate.
6. The 2025 figures come from an RTI reply published by a campaign website, with the portal date it states; they are shown separately and never mixed into the official series in a chart.

What this data does not measure

Six limits, each of which changes how a number above should be read.

• A reported bite is a facility visit, not an injury. The portal counts presentations at reporting facilities. A bite treated at a private clinic that does not report, or not treated at all, is absent, which is why the household survey's 9.1 million is more than double the portal's count.
• The 2022 base is soft. Kerala's 4,000, Delhi's 6,691 and West Bengal's 22,627 for 2022 are reporting-start figures, so the national 69.7 percent rise overstates the change in bites and the state rankings for 2022 are not comparable with 2024.
• The three 2024 totals differ. 37,15,713, 37,17,336 and 37,17,341 are the same year read from a live portal on three dates. The report uses the first because it is the one with a full state table attached; the difference is 0.04 percent.
• Reported rabies deaths are not rabies deaths. The column records suspected deaths entered by facilities, and one Delhi hospital's RTI reply held more deaths than the national table recorded for Delhi. The ICMR-NIE estimate is the figure to plan against.
• Street dog counts are from 2019 and the 21st Livestock Census results had not been published as of 31 October 2026, so bites per 100 dogs pairs a 2024 numerator with a 2019 denominator.
• The survey has its own edges. It covered 60 districts in 15 states and relies on recall of bites in the previous year; its authors report 95 percent uncertainty intervals and this report quotes them.