Even as Uttarakhand Police horse Shaktiman — which was brutely thrashed by BJP’s Mussoorie MlA Ganesh Joshi— recuperates from a fractured leg, a batch of his 20 colleagues are undergoing a gruelling three-month training at the ITBP academy to learn special skills of keeping protesters at bay during law and order duties.
A contingent of 20 horses and 30 handlers from the Uttarakhand Police came from Dehradun in January to National Equine Training School at the forces’ Bhanu camp for learning special skills and techniques of crowd control, mob dispersal and patrolling in mountainous terrain.
Officials said the police horses like Shaktiman were sent to the academy on a request by the Uttarakhand Government to Union Home Ministry last year.
He said the horses — Akbar, Sultan, Altamas, Naaz, Nawab, Neelam, Angoori, Raka, Mandakini, Diana and Julie among others — are around the same age group as 13-year-old Shaktiman and are being given special training to render duties in the hill State for effective upkeep of law and order duties.
The horses, unlike Shaktiman who was without any body armour, are being trained by providing them partial body cover which is required to keep them safe while rendering duties during protests and other similar policing duties when mounted police is called in to deal with protests.
“The recent incident involving Shaktiman is surely at the back of the minds of the trainers but every time they train a police horse, the aim is to make him stronger and sturdier than what they are,” the officials said.