India, July 6 -- It's a rainy afternoon. Cops in many offices under the Navi Mumbai police commissionerate are hard at work. The control room is filled with frenzied clicks of keypads and phone rings. In the kennel, the dog squad trainer is trying to get three excited puppies -- two Dobermans and a German shepherd -- to stop barking. And inside the investigation room, the air is thick and tense as usual.

But at the police headquarter's 1,000-sq-ft butterfly garden, deputy commissioner Sanjaykumar Patil breaks into a smile when he sees a black butterfly. "Did you see that?" he says excitedly while trying to look for other winged creatures. Patil spends a few minutes at this newest feature of the Belapur office every day before starting th...