A CRPF sniffer dog was killed and his handler injured in a Naxal triggered IED blast in restive Bijapur district of Bastar, police said on Saturday.
The incident took place in the Chinnakodepal-Modakpal jungles, when a patrol party of the CRPF’s 170th battalion was out for a road sanitisation and clearing task, Bijapur District Superintendent of Police (SP) Kl Dhruv said.
They said the sniffer dog ‘Cracker’, a Belgian Malinois breed, was hit by the splinters of the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) that was hidden beneath the ‘kuchha’ road in the area by Maoists, the SP said.
Sniffer dog ‘Cracker’ was killed on the spot whereas his handler constable B Bhanu Prakash Reddy had been injured.
It needs to be mentioned that, the force had lost a similar breed dog, Pluto, in January in the same district when a patrol was out for anti-Naxal operations. Pluto’s colleague and CRPF canine ‘Aminika’ was similarly killed in an IED blast in Jharkhand's latehar early this year. later, tributes were paid to martyred sniffer dog ‘Cracker’