Patna, Aug. 3: Policemen in the state capital are flummoxed with the decision to have five IPS officers for the city. Many of them believe that instead of curbing crime it would make the functioning of the police chaotic.

Five officers, who are now in charge of the force, are senior superintendent of police Alok Kumar, rural superintendent of police (SP) Vivek Kumar, city SP (central) Shivdeep Lande, city SP (east) Ms Kim and city SP (west) Upendra Kumar Sharma. Lande will also retain the additional charge of traffic SP.

Sources said the need to have more SPs was felt because of a large number of pending criminal cases.

A police officer told The Telegraph: “There are around 3,880 criminal cases pending in Patna compared to an average of 600 in other districts. As the number is rather high, the need was felt to appoint two more IPS officers.

“However, one must consider that the number of specially reported (SR) cases is high in Patna as compared to the districts. SR cases are those that require the attention of an IPS officer. While Patna gets around 350 SR cases each month, the districts get around 50 to 60.”

Ms Kim will now have 10 police stations under her jurisdiction in Patna City where the crime rate is high. An average of a dozen murders in two months is common in her area.

Sharma would head 13 police stations. Most of these are in the suburbs and the rate of crime as well as accidents is high here.

This is not the first time that three city SPs have been appointed for the state capital. In 2007-08, Varun Kumar Singh was appointed city SP (west), while Ajit Kumar Rai and Anwar Hussain were appointed city SP (east) and city SP (central), respectively.

“The move was not a success. So, the whole idea was dropped,” a police officer said.

He added that it could lead to problems this time around as well. “Lande is a 2006-batch IPS officer, Ms Kim and Sharma are from the 2008-batch. It is obviously a tricky situation, as all the three have been appointed to similar posts. Ever since he joined, Lande has been active and conducted a lot of raids. There has been a whiff of friction between him and Alok Kumar. Lande has always been in the news. It seems an attempt has been made to stop that.”