70-year old Pak man pays 250,000 rupees to resolve feud after sniffer dogs’ ‘gaffe’

ISLAMABAD - Sniffer dogs are particularly used for detecting criminals, and explosives, and help people get out of trouble, but for 70-year-old Zahir Shah of Kalo Shah village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mardan District, they proved to be a bit much of a ‘costly’ discomfort.

Shah was caught in a peculiar situation when sniffer dogs were brought by his neighbour to trace a dacoit that he claimed had entered his house.

While his neighbour blamed him for giving refuge to the dacoit, Shah denied his involvement in any sort of crime, but the issue was not resolved until the old man was forced to cough up a hefty amount.

The incident has left Shah so disgusted that he has demanded a complete ban on the use sniffer dogs to solve criminal cases.

“I had to pay 250,000 rupees to resolve the dispute. The government should ban the use of sniffer dogs to solve such cases as animals commit more mistakes compared to human beings,” The News quoted Shah, as saying.

When asked about the ability of a dog to sniff out criminals and other suspicious articles precisely, Dr Masoom Pirzada, a veterinary doctor in the Civil Veterinary Hospital at Peshawar, said the smelling sense of specilised sniffer dogs was 400 times sharper than human beings.

However, some ill-trained dogs may commit mistakes.

“Therefore, dogs are used for detection purposes all over the world, but some untrained people were creating problems in the society,” Pirzada said. (ANI)