Orly and Orio, both one-year-old Labradors, were inducted into Canine Squad of Chennai Customs on Wednesday for detecting narcotic substances at Chennai airport.
Orio and Orly were born on December 8 last year and went through training at Customs Canine Centre, Attari, for nine months.
This training centre was started in 2019 and the first batch of eleven dogs left the centre in September 2020 to various airports like New Delhi, Amritsar, Kolkata, Pune, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Ahmedabad. The dogs from the second batch, that were also siblings, include Orly, Orio, Ovi, Ora and Opal.
Officials said Orio and Orly have been trained to detect heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and MDMA in the baggages of passengers or parcels arriving at the airport.
During the induction ceremony, Orio and Orly were in blue velvet attire and identified parcels containing narcotics substances during a demonstration exercise.
M.V.S. Choudary, chief commissioner of customs and GST, Tamil Nadu, said: “These two will be an important part of the enforcement team at the airport as their intelligence, dedication, keen sense of smell will make them suitable for detecting contraband goods.”
“Sniffer dogs have evolved with time as a critical element of the customs administration’s anti-smuggling strategy. We have been using them for enforcement work in detection of narcotics, explosives, currency and in many situations, they are the first to put their life on line and go against an armed suspect,” he said.
Mr. Choudary recollected how Hero, a dog in Mumbai airport, and Dolly and Seiko in New Delhi airport, decades ago aided in detecting smugglers. “They become a huge psychological deterrent to a smuggler and act as a protection to officers,” he said.
K.R. Uday Bhaskar, Commissioner of Customs, Airport and Air Cargo Commissionerate, said during any calamity, the dogs were in the forefront. “Those who hitherto banked on frail human nature in carrying out nefarious activities have more reasons to fear now,” he said.
Published - December 29, 2021 10:31 pm IST
