A Better Life For India's Stray Animals

This past quarter was one of the most consequential in SAFI's history. We crossed the 1,000-surgery milestone we once thought was years away, and we stood in court and in villages fighting one of the worst episodes of mass cruelty India has seen in years. Along the way, we were also fortunate to welcome two remarkable new leaders to our board.

Through all of it, the clinic never went dark. The van rolled out. The surgeries happened. Because of you.

Since our in-house clinic in Hyderabad first opened its doors in 2023, our veterinary team has now performed over 1,000 spay and neuter surgeries, 1132 to be precise.  Every one of them was done humanely, lawfully, and with the dog or cat returned to the exact street or sanctuary they call home.

One thousand mothers who will not give birth in a drain. One thousand lives spared from unwanted litters and, too often, cruelty. One thousand quiet acts of mercy, funded by people who will likely never meet the animals they saved.

This did not happen the easy way. Every one of those thousand surgeries required:

• Locating and safely catching unvaccinated free-roaming dogs — many frightened, unsocialized, and in active distress

• Transporting them without injury or trauma in our single ambulance

• Handling and anesthetizing animals whose full health history is unknown

• Performing mass spay/neuter surgery to international standards

• Post-operative recovery under round-the-clock kennel monitoring

• Releasing each dog back to the exact spot they came from, so they keep new unsterilized dogs out of that territory

Our entire veterinary team is formally trained in mass spay/neuter at World Veterinary Service (WVS) — one of the world's most respected institutions for high-volume humane sterilization. That training is why we can operate at scale without ever compromising animal welfare.

Q2 2026 impact at a glance

- 72 humane sterilizations
- 364 vaccinations delivered
- 79 surgical / OP cases treated
- 64 cruelty cases handled
- 39 new intakes
- 18 animals released back to their territory
- 9 adoptions
- 52 sanctuary residents in long-term care (as of June 30)

Month-by-month:
- April: 37 sterilizations, 141 vaccinations, 25 OP cases, 20 cruelty cases, 14 released, 2 adoptions
- May: 17 sterilizations, 147 vaccinations, 32 OP cases, 15 cruelty cases, 4 released, 3 adoptions
- June: 18 sterilizations, 76 vaccinations, 22 OP cases, 29 cruelty cases, 4 adoptions

Every number above represents a life: a puppy pulled from a drain, a vaccinated street dog who will not carry rabies, a senior curled up in a soft bed for the first time. A few numbers worth pausing on:

• 72 humane sterilizations delivered in a quarter dominated by the Telangana emergency — proof that our clinic did not slow down even as our cruelty team was in the field and in court.

• 364 vaccinations— every one of them a barrier against rabies in Hyderabad's communities.

• 64 cruelty cases handled across the quarter, climbing sharply in June as our team pursued the Telangana investigations village by village.

• Sanctuary residents held steady in the high 40s to low 50s— the long-term family of animals whose care never stops, funded month after month by our donors.

The Telangana culling crisis — what we saw, what we did

In April, news broke of coordinated mass killings of community dogs across multiple Telangana villages — poisoning, lethal injection, and beatings, with bodies buried in unmarked pits. India's own Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules make this illegal. The lawful response to "too many street dogs" is sterilization and vaccination — never extermination.

SAFI did not stay silent. During Q2, we:

• Filed 14 First Information Reports (FIRs)with the police across the affected villages

• Filed 4 High Court cases, including one seeking the suspension of the Sarpanches (village heads) who ordered the killings, and one demanding statewide enforcement of the ABC Rules across Telangana

• Retained Avinash Desai, one of Hyderabad's most respected advocates, to personally argue our High Court matters — a signal to the bench, to the state, and to every official watching, that this case is being fought seriously

• Met with multiple senior government officials— the career bureaucrats who actually run the state, regardless of which party is in power. One told us bluntly he did not care about stray dogs. We will hold every one of them to their word, on the record, in court, and in the press

• Deployed our cruelty response team village to village — photographing graves, documenting evidence, supporting police on exhumations and postmortems, and comforting families whose neighborhood dogs had vanished overnight

We are doing everything in our power to deliver justice to these dogs. Every FIR, every court filing, every meeting — we are pursuing this on every front the law allows. The animals who were killed cannot speak for themselves. We will keep speaking until the people responsible are held accountable and ABC enforcement becomes the rule across Telangana, not the exception.

The lesson from Telangana is painful but clear: where humane sterilization programs do not exist, cruelty fills the vacuum. Every dog we sterilize is one fewer at risk, and one less excuse for those who would rather poison than spay.

New leadership — two extraordinary additions to our board

SAFI is growing not just in animals served, but in the strength of the people guiding us. This quarter we welcomed two exceptional new board members:

• Anagh Chaudhry— works in Strategy & Corporate Development at a leading hedge fund in New York City, bringing deep finance and strategic-planning experience to SAFI's growth.

• Dr. Mona Kotecha— Chief Medical Officer at Ventus Therapeutics and a lifelong animal lover, bringing scientific rigor, seasoned leadership, and a passionate commitment to India's strays.

Their guidance, their giving, and their advocacy in professional networks are already strengthening every part of the organization.

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