LUDHIANA: The Director General of Punjab Police, K.P.S. Gill, Said that though there has been no incident related to militancy in Punjab during the current car, the border state was still not totally militant free.
While speaking at a press conference here last week, the DGP said so long as the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan remained active and sent men to create trouble, Punjab could not be described as militant free:
He, however, said the constant vigil by security forces was paying off as there was no hiding place for militants in the state now. ‘The state, he said, had 50 companies of paramilitary forces comprising 3500 men.
Gill, who was here to preside dyer a state level meeting of senior police officers to review the ‘crime situation and look into allegations of human rights violations by the police, remarked that certain organizations which supported Militants in the past, had of late acquired the status of human rights champions.
“They are busy presenting distorted version of events so as to demoralize the police who would not be permitted,” he asserted.
Gill said most of the charges of human rights violations related to the period 199092 and a number of CBI and judicial enquiries had been ordered into them, He called upon his officers to arrive at the these cases.
The DGP instructed the police officials to pay greater attention to routine crime now as normalcy had returned to the state. He urged them to study crime trends and exchange inters district and interstate crime patterns and lay emphasis on crime prevention.
In reply to a question, he said that normal crime had not picked up in Punjab and the crime pattern too had not changed much. He said that reports of misuse of official gunmen by politicians for committing crime were also on the decline and disclosed that a police official had been recently shifted from Ludhiana for trying to grab land. Gill ruled out any review of sending commandos from Punjab to other states. These commandos belonged to the India Reserve Police and not to the Punjab police, so they were meant for deployment anywhere in the country. In fact, he said, of the five battalions to be sent out, deployment had already been completed in Chamba in Himachal Pradesh, He revealed that Punjab planned to raise five more battalions of such commandos. He ruled out any demotion of police officials who had been promoted on an out of tum basis for fighting militancy. Regarding the ‘Lok yudh morcha’” of the dissident Congress MP, Jagmeet Singh Brar, on Noy.1, he said if it created any law and order problem, it would be dealt with at the local level as the police had no preplanned strategy to deal with it.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 4, 1994
