In February 2026, a dog padded into a crowded IIT Bombay lecture hall, climbed onto a desk, and sat there surveying the class as if attendance were compulsory for him too. Students filmed the moment, someone posted it on Instagram, and within days, “Dogesh Bhai” had earned more than 2 million views and a nickname that stuck. 

The internet moved on, as it always does, but the question his fame raised did not: on a campus, or in a city, with thousands of free-roaming dogs, who is responsible for keeping any one of them safe, identified and cared for? 

IIT Bombay's answer arrived months later, when it began fitting its strays, Dogesh Bhai included, with reflective collars carrying a QR code linked to the animal's identity, location history and vaccination certificate.

A QR code tells you the dog’s full story 

Scan the code and a student or caretaker sees the dog's own "Aadhaar ID", a record of where it has been spotted before, its current location, and confirmation of whether it has been vaccinated against rabies. 

That single detail decides how the campus treats a dog day to day, whether it is left alone, flagged for a health check, or approached by someone unfamiliar with it.

The system formalises years of quieter work by student volunteers, who have long pushed for sterilisation and vaccination drives as the only sustainable way to keep both dogs and people safe, rather than the removals that other institutions have sometimes resorted to.

The timing was not incidental. In May 2026, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its direction that municipal bodies sterilise, vaccinate and systematically record every stray dog under their watch, while also allowing dogs to be permanently sheltered rather than left near schools, hospitals and railway stations. 

The order revived the framework under the Animal Birth Control Rules, and effectively told every civic body in the country that ad hoc management of strays was no longer legally acceptable,........

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