CUTIA Tracking Dog

The CUTIA tracking dogs are trained members of Pakistan’s Canine Unit for Tracking and Intelligence Activities, an agency organized for covert pursuit and capture. Paired with human teams, they are presented both as working animals under military discipline and as participants in a force deployed to Dacca in March 1971.

Training and Organization

At a recruit briefing led by Sergeant-Major Najmuddin under the supervision of Brigadier Iskandar, the stated unit structure is three people and one dog. The work requires teams to operate without officers, make their own decisions, and exercise self-discipline and responsibility. The stated mission is to locate and arrest people designated as undesirable elements; the recruits are instructed to obey without question and to conduct their searches covertly, efficiently, and quickly.

The dogs’ role is rendered through the same military routine as the recruits’ training. Questions and answers are barked, while dogs can be heard outside the closed windows. The briefing assigns them a place in an apparatus built around pursuit, capture, and unquestioning obedience, rather than describing them as independent investigators.

Deployment to Dacca

On March 15, 1971, twenty CUTIA units assembled for orders. Sixty-one men and nineteen dogs were present, and the units were told to remove their uniforms and identifying collars. The dogs complied without making a sound; the men also changed into civilian clothes issued for the operation. This shared preparation disguises the units’ military identity before deployment.

The CUTIA teams were flown to Dacca via Ceylon alongside sixty thousand West Wing troops, also traveling in civilian clothing. The dogs therefore enter the narrative not in an isolated training exercise but as part of a much larger military movement to the East Wing. Their disciplined silence at the assembly contrasts with the scale of the operation they are joining.

Narrative Role

The dogs’ training makes them part of a system that turns pursuit into a routine, team-based duty. Their presence in the briefing and deployment scenes helps show how the operation is organized: orders are repeated, questions are discouraged, identities are concealed, and both people and animals are expected to comply. The evidence establishes their preparation and movement to Dacca, but does not describe their subsequent actions there.