The next time you find plainclothes policemen triple riding on a motorcycle with accused or notice a police team escorting a criminal gang in private vehicles, don’t be surprised.
For, crime teams at nearly 60-odd police stations in the city entrusted with the job of prevention and detention of property offences do not have vehicles.
Worse, at a few police stations even a motorcycle is not provided.
As a result, policemen are forced to depend on personal vehicles or hire auto-rickshaws.
“We travel a lot, at times hundreds of kilometres, to nab suspects and recover stolen property and are finding it really difficult to do our job in the absence of any conveyance allowance or vehicle,” said a detective inspector, pleading anonymity.
He explains that since the crime teams are familiar with property offenders and their hideouts, they also need to take up patrolling in the areas to keep a check on their activities.
Although, a fleet of vehicles, including P S mobile jeep, Rakshak Tata Sumos and the newly-introduced Innova patrol cars in addition to ‘Blue Colts’ (motorcycle teams), are provided to the police, they have not been uniformly distributed.
While the P S mobile vehicle is at the disposal of the SHOs, the Rakshak, patrol cars and Blue Colts move around in their respective localities leaving the crime teams without any vehicle.
“Patrolling teams have to follow a duty chart. The regular work gets affected if we withdraw the patrolling vehicle and make it available to crime staff. It is becoming impossible to provide them four-wheelers during ‘bandobast’ or communally sensitive occasions when patrolling is a must,” an SHO, also seeking anonymity, pointed out.
“The authorities need to address the problem by allotting existing vehicles uniformly to different teams at the police stations. This adds no burden to the State government,” an Inspector explained.
