Assam Rifles inducts indigenous dog breeds at Jorhat centre under Atmanirbhar push

Jorhat: Assam Rifles Dog training centre in Jorhat is taking to the union home ministry’s direction of becoming Atmanirbhar(self-reliant) and is inducting indigenous breeds of dogs.

These dogs trained here are sent to different Assam Rifles units across Northeast India. These dogs are used for tracking, narcotics detection and explosive detection.

Lieutenant Colonel and officer commanding of the Assam Rifles Dog training centre Jorhat, Alok Palei while interacting with media persons in Jorhat said, “Union Home ministry has asked us to induct indigenous breed of dogs as a step for Atmanirbhar Bharat in that regard we have trained around six Tangkhul Hui. This was a pilot project.”


This breed of dogs is found in Ukhrul district in Manipur and the dominant population there is Tangkhul Naga people. They were traditionally used entirely for hunting.

Palei added, “Another indigenous which parent stock we are assessing is the Kombai dog. It is found in Tamil Nadu. It will be a pilot project.”

Kombai dogs have been kept as guard dogs. They were also occasionally used for hunting big game.

Palei added, “We have sanction for training 344 dogs and presently we are training 253. Traditionally we have foreign breeds like German Shepherd, Labradors and Belgian Malinois and we have been training however the home ministry directed us to look for indigenous breeds and accordingly Tangkhul Hui breeds were the first one to be trained under this programme.”

He added these trained dogs are deployed along the Assam Rifles along the Indo-Myanmar border. “There are instances when these trained dogs have assisted in detection of a large cache of narcotics along the Myanmar border in Northeast India.”

The centre has trained over 1200 handlers. The first women handler Sreelakshmi PV said, “I joined the unit in 2023 and chose to become handler after training and after her there came another eight women who are undergoing training. It was a thrilling experience to be a handler and I am happy eights others followed me.”

The Nagaland police has sought the help of a dog training centre for training dogs.