A stray dog has hospitalised 31 men, women and children in Kolhapur, western India, after going on a biting spree near the centre of the city.

Witnesses described a pack of street dogs running down the streets of the city in the Maharashtra province before one broke from the group and bit passers-by near Venus Corner.

Officials confirmed 21 men, seven women and three children were taken to the nearby Chhatrapati Pramila Raje civic hospital where they were treated with anti-rabies medication, according to the Times of India.

However the dog is still believed to be on the loose in the city, where the scale of the stray dog problem led officials to start sterilising the animals in 2017 in an attempt to cut down their numbers.

Vijay Patil, the veterinary officer of the Kolhapur Municipal Corporation, said: "We have a team that catches 10 stray dogs daily.

“We sterilise and vaccinate the canines. We are controlling the dog population within the Kolhapur Municipal Corporation limits.

“If the dog population in one area drops, dogs from other localities, mostly from villages and other peripheral areas, fill the vacuum,”

An estimated 35 million stray dogs live across India, where roughly 20,000 people die of rabies each year – making up almost a third of the worldwide death toll from the disease.