Peerzada Masarat Shah
Kashmir is famous for its beautiful valleys, lakes, and houseboats. But in recent years, it has also become known for something far less pleasant — a growing stray dog crisis that has made daily life dangerous for thousands of ordinary people. And yet, when residents try to protect themselves, it is they who end up facing police cases. Something has gone badly wrong with our priorities.
Let us look at the facts first. In just the last two years, Jammu and Kashmir recorded over 2,06,460 dog bite cases. That is more than two lakh people — children, elderly men and women, daily wage workers, farmers — bitten by stray dogs. Kashmir Valley alone accounts for 79,616 of those cases. In Srinagar city, the number stands at 35,174 bites. Every single day, between 30 and 35 people walk into anti-rabies clinics in Srinagar hospitals seeking treatment. Children are among the most common victims. Elderly people have been mauled to death. Entire neighbourhoods live in fear of roaming packs that have turned streets into danger zones.
These numbers are not rumours. They are documented cases.
So when a video recently emerged from **Magam** in Budgam district showing locals defending themselves against an aggressive dog, what happened next tells us everything about where our attention is misplaced. Rather than concern for the people living in fear, a woman activist — described in reports as a journalist — rushed to the police and ensured that an **FIR was registered under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act** against the people seen in the video. The human victims of dog attacks, it seems, can wait. The social media moment cannot.
This is not about being against animals. Dogs do not deserve needless cruelty, and nobody is arguing otherwise. The real question is: why are people reacting with panic and sticks in the first place? The answer is simple — the system has completely failed them.
Why does the stray dog problem keep getting worse?
There are several clear reasons, and none of them have to do with ordinary residents being heartless.
First, garbage. Kashmir’s towns and villages are drowning in unmanaged waste. Open garbage dumps are everywhere — a permanent food source that draws stray dogs in large numbers and keeps them concentrated in residential areas. Dogs that feed on rotting waste, including animal carcasses, become sick, stressed, and unpredictable.
Second, injured and traumatised animals. Dogs frequently get hit by vehicles and survive with injuries. In pain and frightened, they become aggressive. When people stone them out of fear — which itself happens because they feel unprotected — the dogs become even more hostile. It is a cycle of fear and suffering that nobody is breaking.
Third, the sterilisation and vaccination programmes that are supposed to address the stray dog population move at a painfully slow pace. The numbers of surgeries completed each year are nowhere near what is required to bring the population under control. Promises are made during election seasons and forgotten afterwards.
Fourth, there are no proper shelters or rescue infrastructure to house injured, sick, or dangerous animals away from public spaces.
The result is that ordinary people — particularly in semi-urban and rural areas like Magam — are left completely on their own. When a pack of dogs corners a person, nobody from the administration arrives to help. There is no hotline that sends a team. There is no shelter that takes in an aggressive animal. There is just a frightened human being making a split-second decision to survive.
Self-defence is not cruelty.
When a person, in a moment of fear and genuine danger, picks up a stick or throws a stone to protect themselves or their child, that is not cruelty under any honest reading of the law or of religion. Islamic teachings are clear that human life holds the highest value, and protecting oneself from a genuine threat is not only permitted but expected. To file a police case against someone for defending their life is not animal welfare — it is a performance for social media that has nothing to do with actually solving the problem.
The activists and keyboard warriors who rush to the police station after watching a viral video are largely absent when a 70-year-old farmer is mauled to death, or when a child requires multiple surgeries after a pack attack, or when entire mohallas stop letting their children play outside after dark. Their concern appears to begin and end at what generates the most attention online.
This kind of selective outrage does real damage. It shifts the public conversation away from the government’s failure to manage garbage, run effective sterilisation camps, set up shelters, and take dangerous animals off the streets. It also criminalises the very people who are victims of that failure.
What actually needs to happen
The solution to the stray dog crisis is not more FIRs against scared citizens. It is a combination of serious, sustained efforts: proper garbage collection and disposal so that dogs are not concentrated around waste dumps; large-scale sterilisation and vaccination drives conducted at a pace that actually makes a dent in the population; rescue shelters with trained staff; and where an animal has repeatedly attacked humans and proven to be dangerous, the humane removal of that animal from public spaces.
Until the administration takes these steps seriously, nothing will change. Dogs will continue attacking. People will continue reacting out of fear. Activists will continue filming and filing cases. And the common man — the one who actually lives on those streets — will continue to be the villain in a story where he is, in fact, the victim.
A society that punishes survival while ignoring the conditions that made survival necessary has lost its moral compass entirely.
