BASTAR: The premier central reserve police force (CRPF) yet again lost a highly trained sniffer dog famed as ‘Crackers’ in an Improvised Explosive Device (IE) blast triggered by the outlawed CPI (Maoist) in restive Bastar’s Bijapur district, south Chhattisgarh.
The incident occurred in the remote forested terrain of Chinnakodepal, about 350 km south of Raipur, when the trained canine, a part of the patrolling team of CRPF 170 battalion was out in a search operation.
“Both the trained sniffer dogs killed in Bijapur this year were top Belgian Malinois inducted in the CRPF. Cracker succeeded in sniffing out the IED at Chinnakodepal but after moving close to it, the dog accidentally pressed the planted explosives and was killed on the spot. The handler following it escaped unhurt”, the Bijapur-based CRPF DIG Dheeraj Kumar told the New Indian Express.
This is the second occasion when the trained canine owned by the CRPF was killed in the same district. On January 24, an IED blast claimed the life of a sniffer dog ‘Pluto’ at Basaguda in Bijapur.
According to the CRPF officials, trained sniffer dogs rarely get killed this way.
“The trained sniffer dog almost always uses its sense of smell to detect substances like explosives (ammonium nitrate) or drugs. How this incident occurred comes as a shock”, expert of the dog squad said on condition of anonymity.