Taking care of Mumbai's canine citizens

Until around 1994, in order to control street dog population and curtail rabies-related deaths, Mumbai's civic body used to round up street dogs to kill them.

- Pooja Patel

"They were taken to the municipal corporation's killing pound at Mahalakshmi and were kept there for three days. And if nobody claimed them, the adult canines were electrocuted and puppies were put in chloroform boxes," explains Abodh Aras, CEO, The Welfare of Stray Dogs (WSD).

This motivated N W Alimchandani and a few Jain philanthropists to establish WSD in 1985 to rescue street dogs by paying a fee. The NGO's founders realised that killing dogs had no effect on the street dog population or rabies.

In 1994, armed with data showing that the street dogs' numbers and rabies-related deaths were still high, the WSD convinced the municipality to stop the practice.