A four-year-old girl from Karnataka's Davanagere died from rabies in Bengaluru hospital after a stray dog attack.
A four-year-old girl from Davanagere who had been battling for life for nearly four months after a brutal stray dog attack succumbed to rabies in a Bengaluru hospital on Sunday.
The death of Khadeera Banu has once again brought Karnataka’s growing stray dog menace into sharp focus, even as the Supreme Court’s recent intervention in Delhi-NCR has reignited national debate over how to address the crisis.
According to a report by Times of India, Khadeera, a resident of Shastri Layout in Davanagere, was attacked on April 27 while playing outside her home. The dog bit her on the face and multiple parts of the body, leaving her critically injured.
With her condition worsening, doctors in Davanagere referred her to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health (IGICH) in Bengaluru, where she was admitted the following day. However, her condition deteriorated in August, the report added.
Khadeera’s parents, her father a street vendor and her mother a homemaker, claimed to have spent nearly ₹8 lakh on her treatment. But hospital authorities said actual treatment costs would have been much lower.
According to the state surveillance unit’s infectious disease report, Karnataka reported 2.8 lakh dog bite cases and 26 suspected rabies deaths between January and August 2025 alone, a staggering figure that continues to raise alarm among citizens and health experts alike.
Supreme Court on stray dogs
While Karnataka grapples with mounting dog bite incidents, a similar crisis in Delhi prompted the Supreme Court to intervene earlier this month. In a significant move on August 11, the apex court directed authorities in Delhi-NCR to remove all stray dogs from the streets within eight weeks and shift them to dedicated shelters.
The court’s order specified that dogs, once sterilised and vaccinated, could not be returned to their original locations, a notable shift from the current Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules which permit release.
However, the directive sparked immediate backlash from animal welfare organisations and legal experts, who criticised the move as “inhumane” and impractical due to the lack of adequate shelters and staff.
Over the past week, protests have been held in Delhi, Mumbai, and several other cities, with activists urging the government to adopt scientific and humane methods like sterilisation and vaccination, rather than mass relocation.
