Viewer discretion. The videos below show real attacks, including on children. They are included because the footage is part of the public record, not for shock value.
A six-month-old baby is being walked down a street in Sikka Colony, Sonipat, when a pitbull grabs the child and drags the baby across the road. The aunt tries to pull the child free and is hurt herself. CCTV records the whole thing. Reports in September 2026 say the baby was being treated at PGI Rohtak in serious condition, and Open magazine later reported that the child needed surgery for chest and abdominal injuries and was stable on a feeding tube by 19 September. (Open describes the infant as seven months old, while NDTV and India TV say six.)
That clip is the latest push in a debate India keeps having and never finishes: should the pitbull be banned as a pet dog? Every few months a new video goes viral, the same arguments come out, a municipal body announces something, and the story fades until the next clip.
This time we wanted to slow it down. Below you will find the footage, the facts around each case, what owners keep getting wrong, where the law actually stands, and what other countries learned when they tried bans. Then we will ask you the question.
Our question to you: Should pitbulls be banned as pet dogs in India? Vote at the end of this article, after you have seen the footage and read the case on both sides.
The numbers we can and cannot trust
India recorded 37,17,336 dog bite cases in 2024 and 54 suspected human rabies deaths, according to figures Animal Husbandry Minister SP Singh Baghel gave the Lok Sabha on 22 July 2025, as Business Standard reported. Those are national totals. The coverage we read carried no breakdown by breed.
Open magazine pulled together at least 11 incidents involving dogs described as pitbulls between January 2025 and 19 September 2026, and it is careful to say that this is a list assembled from public reports, not a national count. It also flags that reliable comparative breed data is missing.
Read that again, because it matters for everything that follows. Nobody can tell you today what share of Indian dog bites comes from pitbulls. Anyone who says pitbulls cause most attacks is arguing from clips. So is anyone who says they are no worse than any other dog. The clips are all we have, so let us look at them properly.
The attacks, on camera
These are six incidents since 2022, each with a news broadcast you can watch. We have kept to what the reports actually say.
Sonipat, September 2026: an infant dragged down the street
The baby was out with an aunt when the dog attacked. According to India TV, the child was taken to PGI Rohtak, the aunt was also injured, and the owner’s alleged negligence is now being questioned. The family had not filed a police complaint when the report was published.
Patiala, August 2026: a couple who only came to see a rental house
Ankit Sabharwal and his wife walked into a property in Ghuman Nagar to inspect it for rent. The moment they opened the gate latch, a pet pitbull went for both. ANI reported that he needed stitches across his body and she underwent surgery on her arms and legs. Neighbours used sticks to get them out. The victim said the dog did not stop even when the owner ordered it to.
Delhi, November 2025: a six-year-old loses an ear
A boy was playing outside his home in Vinay Enclave, Prem Nagar, when the dog charged and bit off part of his right ear,The Tribune reported. The owner, a 50-year-old tailor, was arrested under sections 291 and 125(b) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The dog reportedly belonged to his son, who is in jail on an attempted murder charge, which left the father facing the arrest for an animal he had not bought. Open magazine adds that the dog was unregistered and that the boy’s father alleged earlier attacks that were never reported.
Mumbai, July 2025: the owner laughs
An 11-year-old was playing inside a parked autorickshaw in Mankhurd when the owner let his pitbull loose. The dog bit the boy on the chin. In the viral video,Deccan Herald reported, the owner and people around him can be seen laughing. He was arrested and later released after being served a notice.
Ghaziabad, April 2024: bystanders watch, street dogs step in
A 15-year-old was attacked in the street while onlookers stood by. He kicked at the dog and was knocked down. One bystander threw water. In the end, it was a group of street dogs that chased the pitbull away, according to Deccan Herald. The boy was in critical condition in a Delhi hospital. A neighbour said the family had been warned that such a dog did not belong in the locality. The municipal corporation took the dog away, and no formal complaint had been filed at the time.
Lucknow, July 2022: the attack that changed the conversation
Sushila Tripathi, 82, a retired schoolteacher, died after the family’s pet pitbull attacked her at home in Qaiserbagh. Her son had brought the dog home, and it was handed to a municipal van afterwards. WION reported that the city’s municipal commissioner then urged residents to pick small, amiable breeds instead. ThePrint reported that the dog, a female called Brownie, was kept confined to the terrace and had not been sterilised, and that a Lucknow Municipal Corporation veterinarian, Dr Abhinav Verma, put her behaviour down to hormonal issues. The Tribune later reported that the dog was returned to its owner with conditions.
Also on record, without a clip we could verify
In December 2023, a woman returning from the bank was attacked for roughly 20 minutes in Kidwai Nagar, Ludhiana. The owner said he had no idea the dog was aggressive and that it was only 16 months old, OpIndia reported.
In August 2025, a man was mauled to death by a neighbour’s pitbull as he returned home from work in Jafferkhanpet, Chennai. Free Press Journal gives his age as 55, though other outlets printed different ages. The owner, a woman who lives next door, was hospitalised with bite wounds after trying to pull the dog off him. Police said the dog was detained and a case would be filed against the owner. The same report mentions a seven-year-old girl seriously injured in the face by a house owner’s pitbull earlier that month.
Open magazine lists a further set from 2025 and 2026: a 52-year-old cab driver bitten on his arms, hands and legs near a Gurugram café in May 2025, a 50-year-old woman with a brain haemorrhage after an attack in her shop in Dehradun that same month, and a 13-year-old boy dragged by two pitbulls near his uncle’s home in Haryana in March 2026, with an FIR against the owners.
What every clip has in common
Watch them back to back and the dog stops being the main character. The gate that opens with a latch. The child playing on a street the dog can reach. The owner who laughs. The owner who says he did not know. The neighbour who warned the family and was ignored. The unregistered dog. The unsterilised one on a terrace.
In Sonipat, Ghaziabad and Ludhiana, early reports said no police complaint had been filed. Without a complaint, an owner faces no legal process at all.
This is the part we think the ban debate skips. A pitbull is a powerful, driven, energetic dog. It does not arrive in a flat in Mumbai already knowing how to live there.
The training nobody did
Delhi trainer Adnaan Khan, founder of K9 School, told The Quint that a pitbull that is not exercised and whose prey drive is not channelled develops “misdirected drive” around eight to nine months of age. Miss the window for teaching the right habits before the defence drive kicks in, he said, and the dog has slipped out of your control. Tandrali Kuli of Friendicoes put it more bluntly: a lot of these cases come down to wrong handling or needs that were never met.
Anyone who has bought a pitbull puppy for its look, posted the reels and then handed the leash to a teenager, a domestic worker or nobody at all knows how that story goes.
Trainers and vets across the country say versions of the same thing. Parmod Kumar, a dog trainer from Ferozepur, told The Tribune that no dog breed is bad or criminal and that with proper training you can channel the energy of any dog. Dr Sudhakar Natarajan, a veterinary DIG with the ITBP in Delhi, said the breeds facing bans are not the villains, and that the villain is the man. The same Tribune feature also carries a Chandigarh vet who points out that biting is a dog’s basic temperament and gets worse in hostile conditions, and a Muktsar breeder who says high-energy breeds like pitbulls need large spaces or they turn irritable. Both views land in the same place. The dog needs a life that suits it.
If you call yourself a pet parent, the job is parenting. Training classes. Supervision. A secure gate, not a latch. A muzzle where the local rules say so. A plan for the day the dog is a year old and stronger than you. Most of the footage above shows none of it.
The fancy-dog problem
Why do so many people who cannot handle the breed end up with one? Kaveri Rana, a member of the Wildlife and Gaushala committee in Gautam Buddh Nagar, told ThePrint that people in big cities often opt for fancy breeds without understanding the dog’s nature and needs. She calls pitbulls among the most faithful breeds, but says they need proper training and discipline, and suggests smaller breeds like shih tzus or lhasas for homes with elderly people or young children.
Breeding matters as well. Khan told The Quint that poorly bred, inbred pups bring temperament and medical problems that ordinary pet owners are not equipped to handle. Kamna Pandey, an SPCA member and former member of the Animal Welfare Board of India, argued in the same ThePrint piece for regulating breeding centres instead of banning breeds.
Then there is the dark end of the trade. PETA India argues that pitbulls in India are mostly used for illegal dogfighting and suffer chaining, ear-cropping and tail-docking. A dog raised that way and then sold on as a pet is not a blank slate.
How a whole breed ends up carrying the blame
Every irresponsible owner does damage twice. First to the victim. Then to every well-trained, well-loved pitbull in the country, because the public sees one clip and files the whole breed under danger.
You can watch the shift happen. After the Lucknow death, Nikhil Mahesh of Umeed for Animals Foundation told The Quint he had seen a new case of an abandoned pitbull across India every day since. Khan makes a point that rarely reaches the headlines: he says labradors, golden retrievers, chihuahuas, shih tzus and lhasa apsos bite a lot more than pitbulls, but pitbull incidents dominate the news because of how severe the injuries are.
Kamna Pandey makes the same distinction from another angle. In her view the breed’s jaw structure causes deeper wounds, not a more aggressive temperament. That is worth sitting with. Even the people defending the breed concede that when a pitbull does bite, the damage is different. Which is exactly why the owner’s margin for error is so thin.
Where the law stands on a pitbull ban in India
On 12 March 2024, the Centre issued a circular asking for a prohibition on 23 breeds it called ferocious, pitbull-type dogs among them. It did not last. The Karnataka High Court quashed it on 10 April 2024, with Justice M Nagaprasanna noting that the government can issue a fresh circular if it follows proper consultation. Six days later, the Delhi High Court directed the Centre to publish draft rules and invite public comments, and the Centre told the court it would hold off on implementation.
As of the latest reporting we reviewed, there is no national law banning the breed. What exists is a patchwork.
The Prem Nagar case pushed it back into court. On 10 December 2025, Justice Sachin Datta of the Delhi High Court issued notice to the Centre, the Delhi government, Delhi Police and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi on a plea by the boy’s father, who wants Rs 25 lakh in compensation and a ban on the import, trading, selling, breeding and domestication of dangerous breeds, Bar and Bench reported. The court kept the dog in custody, told the MCD not to release it unless adequate precautions were in place, and asked police to speed up the FIR. The next hearing was listed for 3 March 2026. We could not find a reported outcome.
Cities have not waited. Ghaziabad’s civic body stopped registering pitbulls, Rottweilers and Dogo Argentinos as pets. In December 2025, the Greater Chennai Corporation passed a council resolution halting new licences and renewals for pitbulls and Rottweilers, requiring leash and muzzle for existing licensed dogs outside the home, with a Rs 5,000 fine for owners who skip them and Rs 1 lakh for buying or keeping these breeds without a licence, DT Next reported. Parts of Punjab and Haryana enforce muzzle and registration rules, some Uttar Pradesh cities license by affidavit, and Bengaluru, per Open, was still waiting on breed-restriction recommendations after a public consultation in February 2026.
What other countries learned
India is not the first country to be here, and the record from elsewhere is not kind to blanket bans.
The Netherlands banned pitbull-type dogs in 1993 and lifted the ban in 2008. The farm minister at the time, Gerda Verburg, said it had not led to a reduction in incidents, and the government gave officials powers to seize aggressive dogs instead, DutchNews reported.
Denmark’s ban is the better-studied case. A PLOS One study tracked hospital-treated dog bites in Odense from 2002 to mid-2015, with the law arriving in June 2010. It found no statistically significant effect once long-term trends were accounted for. The authors pointed out that most bites happen in private spaces, while the law mostly governed public ones, and recommended de-sexing and education programmes over breed bans.
That does not make bans useless everywhere. England and Wales still treat pitbull-type dogs as a prohibited type, with exemptions for dogs that are neutered, microchipped, securely contained and kept on a lead and muzzle in public, and Hong Kong controls the supply through import rules, according to Open. But note what those models have in common with the Dutch and Danish lessons. The ones still standing lean on conditions for owners, not just a label on the dog.
What the science says, and what it does not
A 2022 study in Science, drawing on 2,155 dog genomes and 18,385 owner surveys across 78 breeds, found that breed explains about 9 percent of the variation in a dog’s behaviour. Breed is a weak predictor of how an individual dog will act.
That finding is often quoted as proof that breed does not matter. It does not say that. It says nothing about how badly a strong, large-jawed dog can hurt someone when things go wrong, and severity is why pitbull incidents dominate the news. The country’s own bite data cannot settle it either, because it does not count by breed.
PETA India, which backs a ban, cites US figures showing pitbulls accounted for 66 percent of dog-attack deaths there between 2005 and 2019, 346 in all. That is a claim from a side of the debate that wants a ban, and readers should weigh it that way.
The case for a ban, and the case against
The case for a ban is simple and it is not silly. These attacks cause injuries that change children’s faces and lives, and the people who bought the dogs have shown, again and again, that they will not or cannot manage them. Waiting for every owner to become responsible is waiting a long time. A ban removes the risk at the source, and Chennai and Ghaziabad have already gone partway there.
The case against is just as serious. Bans punish the many careful owners for the failures of a few. Dutch and Danish experience suggests bites do not fall much when only a label changes. Banned dogs get abandoned, hidden or sold underground, which is worse for the dogs and no better for public safety. And the harm in most of the clips above came from things a ban does not touch: unsecured gates, unsupervised streets, no training, no complaint filed.
What a fair rule could look like
Here is where we land, and it is an editorial view, not a finding. Whatever the vote says, the rules India already has are weakest exactly where the clips are worst.
A serious licence would ask for proof of a secure enclosure, meaning a lock and not a latch. It would ask for a training certificate, sterilisation as Dr Verma’s remarks on Brownie and the Danish authors both point toward, a leash and muzzle in public as Chennai now requires, and liability insurance. Any bite that breaks skin should trigger a police complaint automatically, so families are not left to decide whether to fight. Breeders should need licences, as Pandey argues. And the penalty for owners has to be big enough to be felt, because an arrest followed by release on notice does not teach anyone anything.
If you already own a pitbull, or are thinking about one, the experts quoted in The Tribune give a short list worth taking seriously. Talk to a vet and a trainer before the dog comes home. Socialise the puppy early. Train with positive reinforcement. Give it daily exercise that matches the breed. Keep it leashed in public, keep up with vet check-ups, and consider neutering.
Your vote
Should pitbulls be banned as pet dogs in India?
- Yes, ban them as pets completely
- Ban breeding and sale, but let existing owners keep dogs under strict registration
- No ban, but mandatory licence, training certificate, insurance and penalties for owners
- No, the problem is owners, not the breed
Tell us why in the comments. If you own a pitbull, we want to hear what your day of training and supervision actually looks like. If you have been bitten, or have watched a neighbour’s dog get out, we want to hear that too.
Every clip above ends with someone else paying for an owner’s decision. A ban would end the argument quickly, but licensing, training and real penalties would end the excuses, and that is the test we think owners should have to pass first.
September 25, 2026
