Patna: Bihar police have hired retired army officials on contract to impart commando training to police jawans.
Eight retired army officials - six subedars and two havildars - will train around 220 selected jawans from 11 districts of the state in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism tactics. The selected jawans have reached the second battalion of the Bihar Military Police (BMP) stationed at Dehri-on-Sone in Rohtas district, around 136km south-west of Patna, for the roughly two month training.
Parvez Akhtar, commandant of the 2nd battalion of the BMP, has sought a helicopter from the police headquarters to impart training to the jawans on the pattern of the National Security Guard (NSG) and Indian Army commandos.
"Other equipments are ready. Once the chopper is provided, the 'house cleaning drill' will start," Parvez told The Telegraph.
The NSG commandos were among those - along with the Indian Navy's Marcos special operations unit - assigned to neutralise the Pakistani terrorists who had laid siege to multiple locations in Mumbai on 26/11.
"Our jawans will undergo a similar training," Parvez said, adding that such rigorous and specialised training has been organised for the first time in Bihar. A similar exercise was also being carried out by the police officials of Jharkhand and Chattisgarh to sharpen the skills of the state police personnel.
The commandant revealed that the training session would continue for nine weeks.
"Later other batch of the selected police personnel will be inducted. The trainers from the Bihar regiment centre at Danapur (Patna) were personnel of the infantry in the Indian Army and had been deployed in Jammu and Kashmir during the surgical strikes," an officer said.
Pramod Kumar Singh, a retired subedar who is heading the eight-member trainers' team, said that the selected jawans would be trained like army personnel. Five personnel, four of the BMP and one from the Patna district police, have already been trained. These five were among the 20-personnel team that was sent to Bhagalpur to bring the situation under control during the communal flare-up at Nathnagar last month.
Singh, a native of Patna district, said: "I have fought terrorists in Kashmir when insurgency was at its peak there. Our training is by far much better than that of the Bihar police and the Bihar Military Police. We know all about surviving in harsh conditions and handling weapons, many of which police have not even seen."
