With a view to understand the influence of rare earth ion doping on the structural, magnetic and dielectric properties of bismuth ferrite, a series of samples were prepared by the solidstate reaction method. After characterizing the samples with XRD and SEM studies, the magnetic and dielectric measurements were carried out. It is interesting to note that the two impurity phases, viz., orthorhombic Bi 2 Fe 4 O 9 and cubic Bi 25 FeO 40 observed in undoped bismuth ferrite are found to vanish with rare earth doping. Further, the remnant magnetization (M r ) values are found to increase with increasing ionic radii of dopant rare earth ion. Interestingly, among all the samples, La doped BiFeO 3 sample is exhibiting negative magnetization at low temperatures. The dielectric constant is found to exhibit two transitions above room temperature. Efforts have been made to explain the observed structural, magnetic and dielectric behaviours of the materials.