Gujarat Police to get India’s 1st booze-hunting K9 squad

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat Police will soon unleash their small, furry operatives to ferret out hidden loads of liquor. Five beagle puppies will be inducted into the country's first alcohol-hunting dog squad.
In Ahmedabad and across Gujarat, police have often discovered bootlegged booze stashed away in custom-built cavities in vehicles such as trucks, cars, and even bikes.
About 30 cases of bootlegging were detected in Ahmedabad alone during the lockdown. It is a labour-intensive struggle for the cops to uncover secret compartments; for the beagles, the job will literally be a breeze, requiring only a few sniffs. Inspector general of police (modernization) V Chandrasekhar said on Friday the dogs will be specifically taught to develop a nose for booze.
The K9 (dog) squad of Gujarat Police has a sanctioned strength of 186. Police are gradually building the squad up to that capacity.
Dogs to be assigned include beagles, labradors, German shepherds, dobermans, and Belgian malinois. Incidentally, the labradors will join the beagles in the mission to nab prohibition violators.
Inspector B V Kharadi of the K9 squad said that five beagle puppies have been acquired. "Four of them are four months old and one is three months old," he said. "Their training will begin when they are six months old." Last year, when inspector general of police Narshimha Komar was the modernization chief, police had proposed the use of dogs to detect concealed booze consignments.
Sources in the K9 squad said that the beagles will be trained by special consultants at police's Naroda kennel. The dogs will then be deployed in the common bootlegger-corridors across districts. "A well-trained beagle can sniff out liquor and even narcotics from quite a distance" said a dog handler.