Sniffer dog Prince, a celebrated hero of
26/11, succumbed to his heart and kidney ailments at on Friday at Parel’s Bai
Sakarbai Dinshaw Animal Hospital, where he was admitted to on November 16. The
iconic canine was given a 21-gun-salute at 2.30 pm. Nearly 25 personnel of the
from Mumbai Police’s Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad BDDS had come to pay
their respects to Prince.
While Mumbai Police fondly remembers
10-year-old Prince, a black labrador, for detecting four live bombs and 17 hand
grenades that night, his handlers know him as an aggressive, possessive but
playful dog.
“I picked him up the first time when he
was barely three-months old, and I today picked him up to bury him,” said
constable Mahendra Kasekar with BDDS. Kasekar said in his (Prince) last few
weeks, Prince could not eat much and was not even able to consume his calcium
medicines. “He was in severe pain,” the constable said.
“I first met Prince in December 2004 in
Pune where I was given the responsibility to be his handler. My then superior
Steven Anthony had named him ‘Prince’ and indeed he behaved like his name.
Prince was not friendly with other dogs and always felt himself to be superior
to them,” the constable said.
Kasekar and his partner constable Kishor
Nawar have been Prince’s dog handlers for the past 10 years. Prince had retired
from the BDDS responsibilities on August 31.
Recounting the numerous bombs they found,
Kasekar said, “On 26/11, live bombs were found outside Trident and behind Taj.
Three days after the terror attacks, Prince detected a live bomb in a bag in a
parcel room at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.”
Mumbai Police’s spokesperson Dhananjay
Kulkarni said Prince had even played a vital role in 2006 serial blast, where
he detected a bomb inside an ice cream van.
Source: The Indian Telegraph
