Hyderabad Airport's Viral Dog Video — And A Nation Still Fighting Over What To Do With 52 Million Street Animals

Last Updated:May 27, 2026, 07:55 IST

The footage from RGIA is more than an embarrassing slip — it is a window into a national debate that has reached the highest court in the land.

A stray dog ambling through a passenger lounge, sniffing at tables and helping itself to leftover food — the video from Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) in Hyderabad that went viral this week would be unremarkable in many Indian neighbourhoods. Inside a commercial airport, however, it landed like a rebuke. The clip set off a fresh wave of outrage on social media, with travellers questioning everything from security protocols to hygiene standards at one of the country’s major aviation hubs.

Airport authorities responded by saying they are working in close coordination with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), the designated authority for stray dog control, with GHMC teams conducting regular drives within the premises and 21 stray dogs having been addressed since January 2026.

The airport also said waste management protocols had been reinforced across service providers, with mandatory use of covered bins, and that on-ground staff had been sensitised to maintain heightened vigilance.

Whether those assurances will hold is another matter — the dog in the video appeared entirely unbothered.

India’s Stray Dog Debate: A Crisis That Has Reached The Supreme Court

The RGIA video did not emerge in a vacuum. India is home to an estimated 52 million stray dogs, and the human cost of that number has become impossible to ignore. Data tabled in Parliament showed more than 3.7 million cases of dog bites and 54 suspected human deaths from rabies were reported in 2024 alone.

The crisis prompted India’s Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance of the issue — a rare step where the court acts in public interest without a formal petition being filed.

In August 2025, a two-judge bench directed municipal authorities in Delhi-NCR to immediately capture all stray dogs and relocate them to shelters, emphasising that in no circumstances should these dogs be released back onto the streets. The order was described as “too harsh" and practically unenforceable by critics, and was subsequently modified.

A fresh November 7, 2025 judgment by a three-judge bench then ordered that stray dogs be removed and excluded from educational institutions, hospitals, sports complexes, bus stands, depots, railway stations, and other government buildings.

The court went further, warning that Chief Secretaries of all states and union territories would be held personally responsible if compliance failed.

As recently as this month, the Supreme Court refused to modify its November order, leaving in place directions that allow dogs to be removed from locations including schools, hospitals, railway stations, and bus depots.

Airports — conspicuously — are not yet on that list, which is precisely the gap that the Hyderabad incident has exposed.

Not the First Time — A Pattern Across India’s Public Spaces

The RGIA incident is far from isolated. Just weeks ago, Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport faced its own reckoning when a video from Terminal 1 allegedly showing cruelty toward a stray dog went viral, with airport sources confirming that the dog had bitten two flyers earlier that week and that 31 dog bite cases had been reported across all three terminals since January 1.

In a separate Delhi airport controversy, animal rights activists accused authorities of forcibly relocating sterilised and vaccinated community dogs, some of whom had lived near the airport for over a decade.

Hospitals have fared no better. A duty doctor at the Government Chest Hospital in Hyderabad’s Erragadda was mauled by a pack of seven to ten stray dogs while walking between buildings within the hospital premises, suffering Grade 3 bites to her legs and thighs — even as GHMC personnel had been conducting removal drives twice weekly for months.

In Bengaluru, two college students were hospitalised after being bitten by stray dogs during a morning walk, in a city that according to municipal sources reports close to 2,000 dog bite cases every month.

The Hyderabad airport video will likely be forgotten within the news cycle. The problem it represents will not be.

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