Dogs on the prowl in Tihar to check drug smugglers

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Drug peddlers smuggling narcotics into the Tihar Jail beware as prison authorities have decided to take the help of dogs to detect them.

The need for deploying canines was felt after some prisoners managed to smuggle in contraband into the jail despite installation of gadgets.

The duty has been assigned to a team of Labrador and Stately Alsatians who are being trained by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.

"The Labradors and Stately Alsatians of the ITBP that are trained at its National Dog Training Centre in Bhanu will be able to trace drugs smuggled by notorious inmates in body cavities and which remain undetected by normal detectors," Deputy Inspector General of Tihar Prisons R.N. Sharma said.

"They are trained to be alert on more than one kind of drug. These trained dogs can locate drugs concealed in body cavities too," he said.

Tihar Jail, Asia's largest prison, is grappling with the problem of smuggling of different types of drugs and narcotics, including opium, sulfa, charas, cocaine, smack and ganja into the prison premises.

"There has been incidences when prisoner or their visitors have carried in drugs which were not detected. In such cases, these specially trained dogs will work wonders. They can sniff and tell," Sharma said.

"These canines have a sophisticated sniffing system for detection of drugs and explosives. They exceed the human sense of smell and in today's high-tech world, trained dogs are still the best narcotics detectors with accuracy of over 90 per cent," he said.

Sharma said that a dogs squad will come up inside Tihar premises with the help of ITBP. Kennels for them will be coming up near the Tihar headquarters.