DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

Punjab DGP Gaurav Yadav on Friday ordered a crackdown against crime in the state and directed all district heads to prioritise filing of FIRs even in cases of petty crimes, including snatching and theft. The Director General of Police was chaired a state-level review meeting via video conference with all senior field officers and heads of operational wings to evaluate the performance of all the police districts and take stock of the ongoing fight against organised crime, drug trafficking and terrorism, an official statement said here.

"It has come to my notice that field officers usually show reluctance in registering FIR, especially in petty crimes. There should be a free registration of FIRs in all the districts which will help in maintaining law and order in the

state," he said.

Special DGP of Special Task Force (STF) Kuldeep Singh, Special DGP of Internal Security R N Dhoke, Additional DGP of Anti-Gangster Task Force (AGTF) Promod Ban, attended the meeting. Commissioners of police (CPs), range inspector generals of police/DIGs and senior superintendents of police (SSPs) were also present.

DGP Yadav directed all the CPs and SSPs to pay attention towards making arrests in heinous crimes and producing challans in the court in a time-bound manner. He also asked them to hold weekly meetings to review undertrial cases and improve the conviction rate.

While reviewing the performance of all the police districts, he lauded the efforts of districts which did good work and asked the chiefs of the underperforming districts to improve.

He also asked the CPs and SSPs to focus on arresting proclaimed offenders (POs) and absconders.

Stressing on the need to pay special attention to pending investigations, he directed the officers to speed-up the investigations and said the quality of investigations should be improved. Yadav also asked them to take preventive action against criminal elements.

The DGP also took stock of the ongoing drive against drugs and asked the district police chiefs to focus on drug suppliers and peddlers to bring down the street availability of drugs.

Sustained follow up is important, he said, while directing the field officers to establish forward and backward linkages in all the drug cases to catch the big fish.

He also directed the CPs and SSPs to freeze illegally acquired properties.

They were also asked to focus on forming more Village Level Defence Committees (VLDC) in the state.

The DGP said that there should be one VLDC in each village and gave them a target of forming 12,000 VLDCs.

Currently, there are 6,500 VLDCs in the state helping the security forces on ground in sharing real-time info leading to disruption of drug networks in the state, the statement said.

Special DGP, STF, Kuldeep Singh, asked officers to increase public meetings and awareness activities in their respective districts and take qualitative feedback from the public.

Dhoke apprised DGP Yadav that this year Punjab Police has busted five terror modules and has arrested 35 terrorists.

Promod Ban asked the field officers to keep a watch on activities of criminals and gangsters out on bail to avert any possible crimes.
(editor@dailyworld.in)