Customs training sniffer dogs for deployment at international airports

The customs department is training sniffer dogs at its canine centre at Attari near the Indo-Pak border and they will soon be deployed at international airports across the country to check smuggling of narcotics and wildlife articles, among other things, officials said on Sunday.

Sniffer dogs have high value in anti-smuggling work and are being used successfully the world over by enforcement agencies to detect narcotics, explosives, weapons, currency, alcohol, tobacco products and wildlife articles, they said.

Indian customs has its own canine squads -- K9 -- with 17 detector dogs which are deployed at airports across the country viz. New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Trichy, Cochin, Thiruvananthapuram, Amritsar and Pune, said Suresh Kishnani, chief commissioner, Directorate of Logistics under the finance ministry.

For the training of detector dogs and handlers, a dedicated Customs K9 Centre (CCC) was established recently at Attari, Amritsar, he said.

Kishnani said the Central ...