The Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) is going to deploy 72 trained dogs at 10 integrated check posts (ICPs), six land Customs ports, one check-post and one border ‘haat’ to detect smuggled arms, ammunition and drugs that enter from the neighbouring countries, India and Myanmar, said sources in the border force.

At present, the border force has deployed 46 dogs at two international airports, a seaport, land ports and the ICPs to curb smuggling.

Following the successes of the dog squad in preventing many crimes at different immigration and border points of the country, the BGB authorities are going to purchase 26 more dogs from abroad for the same purpose.

The authorities are going to create two posts of veterinary surgeon for providing treatment to and maintaining the dogs, sources added.

The Public Security Service Division of the home ministry has already prepared a proposal to create these two posts of veterinary surgeon. It was sent to the Cabinet Division for placing before the meeting of the secretaries’ committee on administrative affairs, scheduled to be held soon.

In the proposal, the secretary of the Public Security Service Division, Dr Kamal Uddin Ahmed, said the BGB had given a proposal to include 232 dogs under 58 dog squads of the force in its organogramme, but the finance ministry approved only 72 dogs under 18 dog squads of the border force.

In the BGB proposal, sent to the home ministry, it was said that there is a total of 4,427km of border areas with the neighbouring countries—India (4,150km) and Myanmar (271km)—in and around the country.

The proposal added that many dishonest people were smugglings in arms, ammunition and various drugs from the neighbouring countries on heavy vehicles such as trucks.

“It is very difficult to manually check the goods-laden trucks at the check-posts to detect contaminated items like arms and drugs hidden in the goods. If we use trained dogs, it helps us detect the contaminated items easily. This will help stop smuggling of harmful items from the neighbours,” the proposal said.

“Most of the border forces in the works use dog squads to detect various contaminated items at their respective border points,” added the proposal.

The sources said that the BGB purchased 20 German Shepherd and Labrador dogs from India. These dogs were trained at the training academy of the Border Security Force (BSF) in India.

When deployed at the immigration and border points, the dogs help thwart the entry of criminals with explosives, arms and ammunition, and drugs, as well as smugglers from neighbouring and other countries.

The BGB has already deployed a dog squad at Sylhet International Airport in Sylhet (two dogs), Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong, Chittagong port jetty (a squad of three dogs), all land ports and the ICPs, in order to curb smuggling of illegal goods, small arms, explosives and drugs, as well as to preclude possible subversive attempts by terrorists.

On June 5 last year, the BGB’s dog squad traced a man identified as Md Abdur Sobur, a British-Bangladeshi national, who was arrested with 150 rounds of bullets hidden inside cigarette packets at Sylhet Osmani International Airport. The sources said the dogs have been intensively trained to detect narcotics and firearms.