NDRF to commission cadaver dogs to assist in disaster operations

New Delhi: The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) will soon operationalise its first contingent of cadaver dogs who can sniff out the dead or human remains in a disaster or accident zone, officials in the federal organisation said.

About half-a-dozen such dogs are under training at the NDRF battalion bases in Arakkonam in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad for the last few months, they said.

For training the special canines, largely from the Belgian Malinois and Labrador breed, the force has procured a special scent from abroad that smells akin to the odour emitted by a dead body, they said.

"For all these years, the NDRF focussed on its mandate of saving lives. Utilising the golden hour of finding life during a disaster has been the guiding principle of the rescuers and hence finding the dead or mortal remains was not a priority," a senior NDRF officer explained to PTI.

However, we have seen that the force is also part of operations where NDRF personnel are tasked to retrieve bodies from under the debris like in the aftermath of a landslide or train or road accident, he said.

Finding bodies or human remains is important to ensure closure to the families and near and dear ones of the victims, he said.

Hence, the NDRF few months back embarked on a maiden exercise to train cadaver dogs, the officer said.

A second officer said there are hardly any such dogs in the establishment of state rescue forces in India and those who have them, have had a mixed success rate.

The success of such dogs depends on a lot of factors, including prevailing weather conditions, humidity, snow and presence of other strong odours in the area of operation. Detection of the dead is harder than the alive, he said.

"Training such dogs is a challenge as it required a human body or body parts which is not easily available. Hence, a special scent that smells like dead human remains was procured for training the NDRF dogs," the second officer said.

The dogs are expected to complete their training by the next month and then they will be placed with some specific NDRF battalions out of the total 16 spread across the country, he said.

This was one important canine tool missing in our arsenal. Once deployed, we will get to know about the success rate of such dogs, the first officer said.

Two such dogs of the Kerala Police were deployed early this year during the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel collapse in Telangana where eight persons were trapped. These dogs were also used during the Wayanad landslides that took place in 2024.

The force was raised in 2006 and at present has a strength of about 18,000 men and women rescuers deployed across the country as part of 16 battalions and over 30 regional response centres.