Lucknow: A gold medal-winning sniffer dog, Mary, helped Sambhal police crack the rape case of a 6-year-old girl in Babrala after investigators found no witnesses or CCTV footage to build leads.The incident was reported on June 18 when the child, who had been playing outside her home, was found by her mother in a distressed condition. The child was unable to clearly explain what happened, leaving the family searching for answers as police began enquiries in the neighbourhood.A case was registered the next day under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. However, the early stages of the investigation did not yield results. Police said there were no functional CCTV cameras in the locality and no eyewitnesses who could place a suspect near the spot around the time of the crime.“Forensic samples were collected and evidence lifted from the spot, but there was no clear lead in the early stages,” an officer involved in the probe said.The breakthrough came after forensic teams recovered a cloth from the crime scene. With conventional routes failing to identify a suspect, Sambhal superintendent of police Krishna Kumar ordered the deployment of the district’s dog squad. Mary, a trained Labrador from the K-9 unit, was brought to the site and given the scent from the recovered material.Officials said the dog immediately began tracking, moving through narrow lanes and residential bylanes without hesitation before stopping outside a house a few hundred metres away. The residence was identified as belonging to Sandeep, 34, a resident of Panwari village in the Babrala area.“Mary’s tracking gave the investigation a clear and decisive direction. Without her, identifying the accused would have taken much longer,” SP Kumar said.Based on the lead, teams launched a search operation. On the night of June 22, during a checking drive, the accused allegedly opened fire at police while attempting to flee. Police said they responded in self-defence, injuring the accused and taking him into custody. A policeman was also injured in the exchange, and both were taken to hospital for treatment.Police said they recovered an illegal .315-bore firearm, a spent cartridge and three live rounds from the accused.For her role in the case, Mary was awarded a cash reward of ₹10,000 by the SP. The 7-year-old Labrador, a gold medallist from her training batch, has been serving in Sambhal since 2019 and has assisted in multiple investigations, including murder and theft cases, officials said.
