What happened: An animal-rights activist in India is spreading the false claim that rabies is just a “mild virus” that can be killed by washing with soap. Health experts say that’s dangerously wrong.
Context: The claim surfaced days after India's Supreme Court on Aug. 11, 2025, ordered that all stray dogs in Delhi be rounded up and moved to shelters, following numerous reports of dogs biting children.
A Closer Look: The claim originated with comments made by animal-rights activist Ambika Shukla in a video shared on the X account of an Indian news organization called The Red Mike on Aug. 13, 2025. Text in The Red Mike’s post translated Shukla’s comments in Hindi to English, as “Rabies is a mild virus, it dies when washed with soap.” The video gained 641,000 views, 2,500 likes, and 1,300 reposts in two days. NewsGuard independently verified The Red Mike’s translation of Shukla’s remarks in Hindi using a translation software.
The video of Shukla’s remarks was also posted on The Red Mike’s Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube pages. The Aug. 15, 2025, video on The Red Mike’s YouTube page, which has 1.1 million subscribers, was viewed 1,700 times in five hours.
See the video below:
Actually: Rabies is a viral disease most often spread to humans by dogs. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website that the condition is nearly always fatal to humans once symptoms such as fever start to appear, which can be weeks or months after exposure.
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