Patna, Dec. 31: Summoning Bihar director-general of police (DGP) Neel Mani and other senior officers, chief minister Nitish Kumar today directed them to curb cases of kidnapping for ransom.
Taking strong exception to the spurt in abductions, Nitish asked the officers posted at the police headquarters to evolve ways to contain the crime. Sources said Nitish also warned officers posted in the districts of stern action for their failure to resolve kidnapping cases.
The DGP later told reporters that the police headquarters would soon set up a special operation group (SOG) to curb abduction.
“Though important kidnapping cases are monitored from the state police headquarters, we have decided to set up an SOG to neutralise professional gangs of kidnappers,” he said.
The DGP claimed that till date (December 31, 2010) 73 cases of kidnapping for ransom had been reported across the state as against 411 in 2004, 251 in 2005, 194 in 2006, 89 in 2007, 66 in 2008 and 80 in 2009, respectively.
Regarding general kidnapping cases, the DGP said most of them were related to abductions for marriage, elopement, fleeing from houses because of love affairs, failure in examinations, allurement of film industry and other reasons. “In most of the cases of kidnapping for ransom, the victims have been promptly recovered because of effective police action,” the DGP said. He said special focus would be on stopping abduction and road crime in 2011.
He said the city’s first river police station would be made operational in a fortnight near Deedarganj on the outskirts of Patna. Four other river police stations would start functioning soon, he added. The DGP said the police headquarters has submitted proposals to set up 18 more river police stations to deal with crimes in the river belt and diara areas. He said the headquarters had also sent a proposal to the government for recruiting 45,000 personnel to match the national average of police-public ratio.
At present, against a national average of 145 policemen per lakh population, Bihar has 80 policemen per lakh people.
