Sniffing ’em out

New Delhi, Jan. 19: Specially-bred Labrador sniffer dogs and unmanned aerial vehicles, small arms from its arsenals, night-vision devices from its non-lethal inventories and a training school for police are the military’s contribution to combating India’s “gravest internal security threat” — in the words of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

But despite having its nose to the ground and its eyes in the skies over Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, the military insists it will have nothing to do in the campaign against Maoists.

Among the tableaux that will roll down Rajpath this Republic Day will be one showcasing Labrador and German Shepherd dogs from the little known but indispensable wing of the army, the Remount Veterinary Corps (RVC).

So far, the RVC has mainly reared horses and mules to transport heavy loads in tough country. Now, it has been tasked to raise special battalions of sniffer dogs.

The Labradors and German Shepherds have been used in Jammu and Kashmir and in the Northeast to a small extent. Six dogs have also been tried out experimentally in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. The army dogs will now be deployed in larger numbers. In five years, the RVC could be breeding as many as 12 battalions — nearly 12,000 — dogs.

The dogs pick up trails of suspects and arms caches as their nostrils have been trained to be discriminate between smells and are particularly sensitive to explosives. In the six months that six Labradors have been used in the rebel territories with an officer and seven trainers who are junior commissioned officers, the RVC has claimed greater success than the police.

The new battalions will be raised mainly in the RVC’s main base in Meerut but other centres will also be developed, according to the corps’ additional director general, Major General Narayan Mohanty.

The chief of the RVC, a defence ministry additional secretary and the Union home secretary are slated to meet shortly to discuss their deployment and the additional raisings.

In the same parade, the Indian Air Force will showcase its Israeli-made Searcher Mark II unmanned aerial vehicles. The pilotless spy aircraft are fitted with high-resolution cameras and are operated by its own dedicated teams. Two such teams have now been moved from their original bases close to the western border to the Central Air Command. The UAVs fly over Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh’s dense jungles and rugged terrain, feeding footage to a monitor. IAF personnel and state police teams analyse the images to check out rebel hideouts.

On August 15, a Searcher Mark II flew sorties over Srinagar’s main stadium as ceremonies were on. The IAF has also offered its Mi-17 IV multi-utility helicopters to transport police and paramilitary forces on Maoist terrain .

To complete the military’s involvement — but army chief General J.J. Singh has said it will be this far and no further — the army has sponsored the special school for policemen in Bastar. It is run by a retired brigadier who was the commandant of the army’s super speciality Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in Vairangte, Mizoram.