GUWAHATI: Quarmy, one of India’s top-three sniffer dogs, has hogged the limelight as the female German Shepherd won a special prize for her role that helped forest department officials in Assam to crack numerous wildlife-related crimes in Assam.
She bagged the prize in a special contest for wildlife sniffer dogs, announced by wildlife trade monitoring network “TRAFFIC”.
The dog and her handler Lakhmi Nandan Baruah and assistant handler Johnson Teron were felicitated by Assam’s forest department on Monday.
Official sources said TRAFFIC and World Wildlife Fund, India would offer Rs.15,000 to Assam’s forest department for Quarmy’s welfare. Her handlers will get either a mobile phone or a camera valued up to Rs.7000.
Official sources said Quarmy had proved her mettle all along in solving cases pertaining to wildlife crimes and theft. It was based on her leads that the forest officials had recovered a .303 rifle from a pond and nabbed a rhino poacher in 2017.
The next year, the two year-and-eight-month-old dog had helped solve two major cases. In one of the cases, her leads had helped the forest officials to recover a rhino horn. In the other case, a certain amount of cash was recovered. She also helped the police to recover numerous stolen items.
“She always gives clues which help us to crack or solve cases. She can easily detect the body parts of any Indian wild animals. Normally, the other sniffer dogs that we have cannot,” forest ranger Pranjal Baruah told this newspaper.
According to him, the dog’s crime scene investigation is excellent.
“If we fail to read the clues given by her, we are nowhere,” Baruah said, adding, “She is constantly being trained by her handler (Lakhmi Nandan Baruah). Her detection is very fast. Even during training, she had earned kudos and received an award in excellence”.