HYDERABAD: As many as 31 police dogs including those belonging to the Belgian Malinois breed, which helped the US Navy Seal team in tracking and killing former Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, along with two canines from Goa police, passed out from the Integrated Intelligence Training Academy (IITA) in Moinabad. Forty-seven handlers also passed out along with the canines.
These canines will be inducted into the Telangana police department and would soon be deputed to police units and specialised wings like OCTOPUS, an elite counter-terrorism wing, Greyhounds, which Greyhounds specialises in counter-insurgency operations. With the induction of 31 canines into the police department, the total strength of canines in the Telangana Police department has reached 260.
Ravi Gupta, Principal Secretary (Home), Telangana reviewed the Passing out Parade (PoP) and distributed prizes to the winners in four different categories, Assault, Trackers, Narcotics, and Explosives.
Canines have been playing a vital role in crime investigation in nabbing accused in cases of murder, thefts, etc, and also in detecting explosives, said Ravi Gupta. After their induction into the force, each canine has to undergo a refreshment course once a year, at IITA which is one of the premier institutes in the country in terms of training canines.
As a part of their eight-month-long rigorous training, they will be first groomed, fed on time, get acquainted with the handler. Then, the canines come to a stage of identifying their handlers. From the fourth month, they are trained to obey commands, sitting, standing, lying down, saluting, etc. They then go through a test, and those who clear the test are trained on full scale to identify explosives, narcotics and suspects, and other related aspects.
While the usual lifetime of dogs is around 14 years, dogs that are inducted into the Police Department retire at eight years of age, after which they are handed over to the handlers.