The Raigad Police will miss its ace investigator. The police department’s 10-year-old Dobermann, Mylo, died on Monday after fighting a battle with cancer. Retired in June this year, the dog’s services had been utilised in 591 cases, of which 43 were solved due to his efforts.
“He was primarily involved in crime detection. For crimes such as murder, housebreak and thefts, he used to be taken to the spot,” said Darshan Sawant, Raigad Police dog handler.
Mr. Sawant remembers him as a “disciplined and silent dog”, who did his duty with diligence, till the end: he would never veer from the command given to him. He said, “If he was asked to guard a particular object, he would do so till another command was given. Despite being unwell, his ability to take commands remained the same. He continued to practise his skills.”
Of the cases solved due to Mylo’s superior sniffing skills, five were of murder, 17 of housebreak and 21 of theft. In a case registered with the Tala police in Raigad, a girl was killed by her brother and a cousin, and her body was dumped in a jungle. Mylo was taken to the spot, where he sniffed the route the accused took and helped the police nab them. He went further, and helped extract a confession. The accused kept denying his involvement for three days, upon which the handler asked Mylo to frighten him with his barking and feign an attack. That did the trick.
In another case, a husband had killed his wife, dumped her body in an anganwadi nearby and went into hiding. Mylo found the body and helped identify the accused within 40 minutes of sniffing the chopper used in the crime, said Mr. Sawant. Mylo also played a major role in another case of rape and murder of a minor in Mahad. The girl had gone missing, and Mylo was made to sniff her used clothes at home, following which he took the police to a jungle area where her body was found. “His sniffing capability was strong and accurate,” said Mr. Sawant.
Mylo, who was born on June 5, 2008, had joined the police department when he was barely two months old. In January 2009, Mylo had gone for a seven-month training at Shivaji Nagar in Pune at the State’s dog training centre. “After he fell sick, he was admitted to the veterinary hospital in Parel and later shifted to the hospital in Alibaug, where he died. We bid him farewell with all due respect and protocol,” said Sachin Gunjal, Additional Superintendent of Police, Raigad.
The Raigad police is now left with five dogs, of which one is used by the narcotics team, one for crime detection and three by the bomb squad.
