The land grab complaints received by the police in southern districts would continue to get focussed attention, said Inspector General of Police (south zone) Rajesh Das here on Tuesday.
Addressing a press conference, he said that the government had established exclusive cells to handle the petitions received from public on land grab charges. In south zone, particularly, Madurai district had performed the Herculean task in an appreciable manner. Rightful owners had thanked the police for their timely intervention on land grabbers and for rescuing their properties. Be it one cent or 10 cents or 50 cents or several acres, the petitioners who were deceived in some way or the other had got it back legally.
According to Madurai Superintendent of Police Asra Garg, who was also present at the press conference, in October 2011 alone, the police had received 45 petitions. After inquiry, the teams had registered eight cases and arrested 18 persons and retrieved 49 acres of land and handed it over to the rightful owners.
The value of the retrieved properties was around Rs six crore. The police officers and personnel were commended by Mr. Rajesh Das.
The complaints on land grab were aplenty until a couple of months ago, but it had fallen gradually now. There had been an awareness among the public, who went to the Registration Department and the police action had come as a wake-up call to cross check several finer details prior to buying or selling of any property, Mr. Garg said.
Vehicle tracking system
With rising number of vehicle population, there are many complex cases being reported. On many occasions, cases of hit and run remained unsolved. In a bid to step up investigations and swift action, the Madurai District Police had introduced a vehicle tracking system.
Dedicating the facility, Mr. Rajesh Das said that public can complain to the police control room (100) by just giving the vehicle number and the place of occurrence in the event of any accident or violation of road rule. The police in turn would SMS the details to the Data Control Room, which functions at the office of the Superintendent of Police, Madurai district.
On receipt of the SMS information, the vehicle details, such as name of the owner, model of the vehicle (four-wheeler/two-wheeler), colour of the vehicle, et al would be downloaded and forwarded to the respective station for follow-up action. In the event of any fake registration numbers, the police would know about it, he clarified.
“We have about one crore vehicle numbers stored as of now…As and when we receive, it will be added to the data base,” Mr. Garg replied.
Training in handling of explosives
A three-day workshop, which began on Tuesday, on ‘handling explosives' for police personnel from different parts of south zone was under way at the District Police Office here. ASP (Training) Sonal Chandra who has been coordinating the workshop said that a systematic training would give confidence to the personnel to handle any crisis in a better manner. Resource persons from the revenue and among other departments handling explosives addressed the participants.
