Department of Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has taken the task to help Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) to conduct a pioneering Research and Development to manufacture K9 Target Odour Scent Pads. These scents will help in detecting explosive and banned products by the dogs.
According to a statement by ITBP, the manufacturing will be done by roping in their world renowned Biochemistry and Material Physics experts at the DRDO HQ New Delhi and DRDO Gwalior.
The famous DRDO Scientist Dr Sangita Rao Achary Addanki, Director DLIC DRDO and Dr Om Kumar, Scientist G, a world acknowledged biochemistry expert are helming this project to manufacture these scent pads for the canines which uses during the time of their training.
This initiative of ITBP to approach DRDO would help all paramilitary forces and state police organisations and security forces including Indian Army. The will help in enhancing the olfactory conditioning of service K9s in detection of explosives and narcotics.
These K9 scent pads will be available at 1/100th of the cost of foreign K9 scent pads, said in the statement. The costing of these scent pad kits as per official website of a US Company having distributors in India. Each one of the Scent Kits for Heroin/ Opium, Marijuana, Fentanyl, LSD and MDMA are ₹29,127 each. In addition to this, each scent kit for TNT, Nitroglycerine, PETN, Semtex etc also cost ₹29,127 each. The TATP scent pad costs ₹47,235.
Each of these foreign kits can be used for a few times thus would incur huge recurrent expenditure and would be a drain on foreign exchange.
Currently all security forces’ canines in India are conditioned on ‘real materials’ however having a specific target odour impregnated on an inert material would remove numerous teething troubles in K9 scent olfaction.
DRDO arranged for a high level scientific meeting with DIG Sudhakar Natarajan, the Veterinary Head of ITBP and roped in DRDO Gwalior Experts via video conferencing to understand the technical parameters of this technical project.