On the languorous Sunday morning before Republic Day 2026, life at Yacharam — about 50 kilometres from Hyderabad — moved at its usual pace. Farmers tended to their fields and cattle, old and retired men debated politics on the roadside over hot cups of chai, and dogs dozed in patches of winter sun, spent from their nocturnal wanderings.
The ordinariness of the scene, however, was deceptive. There were no signs to suggest that the village, just days ago, had issued a death sentence.
Five days earlier, Yacharam had been thrust into the headlines as the epicentre of an alleged mass killing of stray dogs. While animal welfare activists spoke of nearly 100 strays being wiped out, police recovered 37 carcasses, enough to confirm that something systematic and merciless had unfolded in just a few hours.
Outside the Panchayat building, under renovation, a larger-than-life poster of newly elected sarpanch Masku Anita Saranam, with her husband beside her, smiles down at the village. A first-time elected representative to a post reserved for Scheduled Caste women, she now finds herself at the centre of the controversy. Along with Panchayat secretary Kishan Naik, she has been named as co-accused in the complaint lodged at Yacharam police station in connection with the mass killing of stray dogs.
Details of the sordid tale emerge only in fragments, stitched together from villagers’ accounts. Hired killing squads allegedly went from street to street, shooting poisoned darts at the dogs. After brief convulsions, the animals died.
A villager, speaking on the condition of anonymity, claims that nearly 70 dogs were killed in this manner, in a matter of a few hours.
The killing spree came to an abrupt halt only after Dasarath, a resident, raised an alarm over the mistaken killing of his pet dog.
This incident at Yacharam is far from an aberration. Panchayat elections that concluded in Telangana last December appear to have carried an invisible death writ for stray dogs. Campaigns promising to “resolve” monkey and stray dog menace proved electorally rewarding, leading a large number of candidates to victory.
Animal welfare activists estimate that 1,500 to 1,600 dogs from over a dozen villages were killed within a month of the new governing bodies being sworn in. The deaths were reported across Kamareddy, Jagtial, Hanamkonda, Nagarkurnool, Ranga Reddy and Nirmal districts.
Images of heaped dog carcasses unearthed from various locations soon flooded social media, triggering widespread horror and disgust.
“We are getting more alerts every day. Many panchayats are doing it to appease voters ahead of the MPTC (Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituency) and ZPTC (Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency) elections,” says Preethi Mudavath of Stray Animals Foundation India (SAFI) who lodged police complaints in several stray dog killing cases.
In Yacharam, both Anita Saranam and Naik remain incommunicado even as their relatives denied any role in the killings. The narrative that emerged was carefully uniform: the killers had been hired by someone unknown; the dogs were found dead by the panchayat’s sanitation workers who removed and buried the carcasses as part of their duties. It is a version that the villagers have stuck to collectively and one that police investigations are unable to breach.
Nevertheless, when asked why the killings took place, reticence gave way to candour.
“We cannot let our children go to school unescorted,” says Anil Kumar, a resident, adding, “There have been so many incidents of dogs attacking children on their way to or from school.”
Eight-year-old Abu Talaha bears the scars of that fear. Three months ago, he was bitten on the face and eye by a dog inside his own home.
“We were all sitting outside and he went in to switch on the television. There was a dog inside that none of us noticed. It pounced on Abu as soon as he entered the room,” says the boy’s uncle, Mohammed Ifthekhar. The family, which runs a small automobile repair shop, spent nearly ₹20,000 at a private hospital for treatment against infection.
A taste for ‘blood’
Nearly every household in Yacharam has a similar story to tell. Livestock, too, has not been spared. Days after the mass killing came to light, packs of dogs killed two goats in separate incidents.
“I bought a lamb when it was days old and raised it like my own child. It was pregnant when the dogs attacked her. I went to shoo them away but they turned on me. I had to leave the goat and run for my life,” recalls M.Yadaiah, a farmer.
Another farmer, Kondapuram Yadaiah, had the same experience on his farmland the very next day.
Villagers describe the dogs as feral and beyond control. They claim the animals feed on dead chicken dumped on the village outskirts by nearby poultry units. When chicken waste is unavailable, they move in packs to hunt and attack people.
“These dogs are addicted to blood and do not touch the food we offer. Hundreds of them roam villages such as Yacharam, Mogullavampu, Gadda Mallaiah Guda and Chowdarpalle, enter homes and attack children and the infirm. They terrorise people,” says Syed Sajid, a ward member.
Poultry farmers dispute the charge. Moddu Vishnuvardhan Reddy, who runs a poultry unit in the area, says dead birds are usually dumped in a pit and set on fire as per the disposal practice followed locally.
In Telangana, even urban local bodies struggle with solid waste management and stray dog control. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, with jurisdiction over the State capital, is still grappling with both. Other municipalities lag further behind and village panchayats even more so.
Yacharam, a mandal headquarters in Ranga Reddy district, is also part of Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s proposed Bharat Future City, envisioned as a futuristic urban hub. Property prices have surged in the village, flanked on both sides by real estate ventures.
Solid waste is collected door to door by a tractor engaged by the Panchayat and dumped in a pit at the base of a nearby hillock, heavily excavated for construction projects. Notwithstanding regulations, the waste is set afire every few weeks.
The village’s sewage flows into a stormwater drain that empties into a pond on the outskirts, now a resting spot for the dogs.
Dog lovers vs daily victims
Hostility towards stray dogs is rising across Telangana, mirroring a wider national trend and deepening the chasm between affected communities and ‘dog lovers’. Many residents argue that those least exposed to the daily risk of attacks should not dictate terms to the ‘actual sufferers’. Viral videos of dogs mauling children, and at times adults, have only intensified the anger.
The numbers from Yacharam reflect that anxiety. Since January 2025, the village’s primary health centre (PHC) has recorded 667 dog-bite cases from 19 villages across the mandal, with 109 cases from Yacharam alone, which has a population of about 5,000.
“Anti-Rabies Vaccine is administered here but in severe cases, the patients are referred to the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Hyderabad for Human Rabies Immunoglobulin injection,” says M.Sandhya, nursing officer at the PHC.
Of the 50-60 dog-bite cases received every month, 15-20 involve serious injuries, she adds.
In 2023, a single dog bit 30 people, all of whom were referred to the Vanasthalipuram area hospital in Hyderabad, says K. Venkatesh, an operator at the PHC.
Statewide data underscore the trend: cases rose from 92,924 in 2022 to 1,21,997 in 2024, an increase of nearly 30% in just two years.
As fear grows, NGOs working for animal protection are increasingly drawing public ire. Actor Renu Desai faced online backlash after condemning the killings at a press conference, while Amala Akkineni, founder of the NGO Blue Cross, is routinely trolled for opposing cruelty to strays. Yet Blue Cross, working with the GHMC, has successfully contained stray dog populations in western Hyderabad through the Animal Birth Control and Anti Rabies (ABC-AR) vaccination programme prescribed by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI).
Not all animal welfare NGOs, however, engage at the ground level. Several lack even a functional helpline for emergency rescue even as ‘donation’ links occupy prime space on their websites and social media pages.
As of August 31, 2025, the AWBI listed 3,594 recognised animal welfare organisations nationwide, including 37 from Telangana. Even among these, a majority are quasi-religious bodies focussed solely on gaushalas and cow protection.
Desai’s Shree Aadya Animal Shelter, for instance, has presence only on Instagram and does not provide a helpline number despite enqueries.
SAFI, which has shot into the limelight through a series of complaints on canine killings, was established over five years ago by Ujwala Chintala, a non-resident Indian from Telangana. Based in Florida and registered in India, the organisation has all its six board members residing in the United States. Its only point of contact is an e-mail address that is monitored for alerts while a shelter for stray animals operates at Bowrampally in Hyderabad.
Mudavath, who lodged the complaint in Yacharam, is not a volunteer with SAFI. She works as a salaried ‘cruelty prevention assistant’, like her other colleagues.
An introduction by Chintala posted on the website recounts how a visit to India sensitised her to the plight of strays when her daughter befriended a dog whose litter was later driven away by neighbours, leading to the death of some puppies.
Compassion towards stray animals is not uncommon in India, where dogs and pigeons are habitually fed by strangers, shopkeepers, devotees and animal lovers. But when empathy is demanded of communities living with the daily risk of attacks, the backlash can be fierce.
That divide was evident when the Supreme Court recently came down heavily on dog feeders, holding them accountable for attacks — a move welcomed by many even as animal lovers expressed shock.
“A large number of people regularly feed dogs on the roads. But what happens when feeders are absent for days due to travel or other reasons,” asks a veterinarian in government service. “The starving dogs, who lack the skill to find food on their own, resort to attacking vulnerable persons. Pet parents make alternative arrangements for their dogs or other pets. But in case of dog feeders, that sense of responsibility is missing.”
Following the apex court’s directions, the GHMC has begun relocating strays from institutional premises to shelter homes where they are reportedly fed, vaccinated and treated. Scaling this model nationwide, however, is impractical given that India is estimated to have over six crore stray dogs.
Laws for protection, extermination
Akkineni argues that workable solutions lie in moderation. She opines that both sides must shun their extreme positions and empathise with each other, even as she advocates a three-pronged approach: keeping surroundings free of waste, adopting strays and sterilisation to control canine populations.
For villages like Yacharam with unsafe waste disposal practices and no mechanism to manage strays, mass extermination is often viewed as the only option. The village had resorted to similar measures on two earlier occasions, both of which went unnoticed.
“In GHMC’s purview, NGOs are paid ₹1,650 per stray dog for ABC-AR operations which include sterilisation, vaccination, five day observation and feeding. Dog catching squads with vehicles are deployed to capture the strays and bring them to shelter homes. Village panchayats have neither such facilities nor funds to work with NGOs,” says an official.
The Telangana Panchayat Raj Act, 2018 offers little clarity. It allows panchayats, in consultation with the district collector, to issue notices that unlicensed dogs or pigs straying into their limits will be handed over to an ‘Animal Protection Committee’ — a body left undefined, with no clear duties or powers.
In case of disease outbreaks or threats to human life, the Act merely permits panchayats to “restrain” stray dogs and pigs. By contrast, the GHMC Act, 1955 is explicit: Section 249 empowers the Commissioner to destroy an unclaimed dog.
Most NGOs invoke the AWBI rules and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, as a shield to protect stray dogs. But the Act itself leaves room for nuance. While listing the functions of AWBI, it empowers the Board to ensure that unwanted animals are destroyed by local authorities whenever necessary, either instantaneously or after being rendered insensible to pain or suffering.
The law also exempts from the definition of cruelty “the destruction of stray dogs in lethal chambers or by other methods as may be prescribed, or the extermination or destruction of any animal under the authority of any law for the time being in force.”
In essence, the Act does not bar euthanasia as a population-control measure; it only prohibits needless cruelty such as the use of strychnine injections.
What the law offers then is not a blanket moral verdict but a framework: one that demands humane methods, clear accountability and institutional capacity. In the absence of all three, villages like Yacharam are left to choose between fear and illegality, turning a public safety crisis into a cycle of violence that satisfies neither compassion nor justice.
