Chandigarh, May 19: In a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country, 10 labradors, aged 10 months and trained by a former US army dog trainer, are set to join the Punjab Prison Service to sniff out drugs inside jails. The Prisons Department will pay a whopping Rs 2.3 lakh for each of the canines, hoping that they would be able to achieve what manual checking has not — stopping the flow of drugs into jails.
Prison inmates employ various methods to smuggle in drugs — body cavity being the most popular. Also, visitors carry drugs inside jails concealed in vegetables or in tins of ghee, flour and rice.
Trained at the Punjab Home Guards Canine Breeding and Training Institute at Sundran village near Dera Bassi, the dogs would be inducted as jail guards for a tenure
of 10 years.
According to institute director Newton Sidhu, the trainer, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has 38 years’ experience in training dogs to detect explosives and drugs. “So far, we have sold 41 dogs to the Punjab Police besides the paramilitary forces,” he says.
ADGP (Prison) Inder Preet Singh Sahota claims the department struck a good bargain. “Usually, one has to pay Rs 3 lakh for a trained dog,” he says.
