According to Krishnan, who owns a soap-manufacturing unit in Noida, the dog was snatched while the family’s household help, Rupatan, was walking it near Rockwood School in Sector-33 early Friday evening.

The domestic help claims two youths approached him while he was walking the dog and asked him to hand it over to them. “I refused, but then two other boys came out of a white Maruti-800 car and snatched Tough’s leash from me and shoved him inside,” he said.

The four then drove off, the family has told the police.

Reasoning why the Labrador did not raise a racket when it was ‘abducted’, Krishnan’s wife Poonam said, “Tough is a friendly dog; it happily sits in a car whenever made to.”

In the evening, Poonam Krishnan said her daughter went to nearest petrol pump to enquire about the dog. “The employees at the petrol pump told her that four youths with a dog had come there to refill their car not long before that,” she said.