For two days, a young black police dog was spotted sniffing the mud and debris at the site of the Idukki landslide, which has already claimed 55 lives. The 9-month old pup, which attracted cameras, has been identified as Maya. She is being trained to become Kerala Police’s first ‘cadaver dog’.
Maya is a Belgian Malinois, the same breed of police dogs which helped US commandos track down ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and Al Qaeda Chief Osama Bin Laden in two major anti-terror operations. One of the most famous military dogs in the US is Conan, a now-decommissioned Belgian Malinois which took part in the 2019 Barisha raid in Syria that killed ISIS and ISIL leader Abu Bakr Al Bhagdadi. Conan is said to have chased Bhagdadi down a tunnel when the ISIS chief detonated his suicide vest.
Still a trainee pup at the Kerala Police Academy in Thrissur, Maya has been helping the police force retrieve dead bodies or cadavers from locations of natural disasters or accidents.
On Sunday, she and Dona, a search-and-rescue trainee dog, were brought to the landslide site in Pettimudi to help sniff out mortal remains from the mud. Dona is a 9-month old Labrador, who is being trained to track down and rescue victims. The duo belongs to the same batch of Kerala Police trainee dogs.
“We brought Dona and Maya to familiarise them with the terrain, the mud and debris and climate in Idukki. This is part of their training days, after which they will be officially commissioned into service by the Kerala police,” says an officer at the academy. The pups were brought back to Thrissur on Tuesday, as they found Idukki’s rains and cold weather difficult.
While local reports have claimed that the two dogs helped recover six bodies from the landslip site, officials at the police academy have confirmed that the duo have not received sufficient training to track down dead bodies.
“We are skeptical about crediting retrieval of bodies to Maya right now. We have just started training her and she has five months of rigorous training left,” the official stated.
Eight months ago, Maya was handpicked from a breeding centre in Haryana by a Kerala Police veterinary surgeon and brought to Thrissur, where she is now undergoing different stages of training.
“We use human blood and scents of different body parts’ like teeth to train her. The first stage involves training her to sniff out blood. Human blood is mixed with mud or buried under mud and sand, and she is made to trace it,” the official added.
She will also be taught to sniff out human cadavers in different stages of decomposition. For this, chemicals known as ‘pseudo scents’ which duplicate the odor of decaying human flesh are used. “The chemicals are expensive but can give off the exact scent of a body in decomposition and different scents are available for different stages of decay - be it one day, five days or one month,” the official says.
The Idukki landslide which occured on Friday morning at Pettimudi has claimed 55 lives so far. NDRF forces are still attempting to retrieve bodies of victims from beneath the debris.