On guard

The soaring crime graph of the state capital has compelled the police to chalk out new strategies to fight criminals.

“To start with, we have decided to create 30 more teams of quick mobile personnel,” deputy inspector-general (DIG), Central range, Sunil Kumar told The Telegraph on Monday.

At present, 99 quick mobile teams are spread across all police stations in Patna district and the personnel keep a vigil of the respective areas on motorbikes.

“We want to ensure that be it the personnel of the quick mobile teams or those manning the capital either on foot or in vans should be present in their areas of jurisdiction at any given point of time. We are taking a number of steps for this — the immediate being the increase in the number of quick mobile teams. The new teams will be deputed within a week,” the DIG said.

He added that the police have held a series of meetings and a special plan was being drawn to implement the plan at the earliest.

The police in the state capital are on the back foot in the wake of a recent spate of crime and their inability to crack the cases. The principal of the nursery section of Ankur Public School, Neelam Sharma, was murdered at her Rajiv Nagar home-cum-institution in daylight on Friday last week. Criminals snatched a gold chain of Gauri Verma, an employee of the vigilance investigation bureau, at gunpoint after brutally assaulting her on Circular Road near the chief minister’s residence, a few hours before Neelam’s murder.

“We will conduct a thorough check in the condition of each police station. For example, the area that comes under the jurisdiction of Danapur police station is huge. We will ensure that the area gets two additional mobile units for effective patrolling. Besides, the police are looking into the patterns of crime in all areas. For example, the Khagaul police station has seen several incidents burglary in the recent past. Hence, the focus will be on night patrolling. Areas like Patliputra and Rajiv Nagar have witnessed a rise in loots and snatching of chains during night. These areas will also see an addition of quick mobile men,” Kumar said.

The officer added that all police stations would be divided into small beats or sectors. “The plan is to have a beat constable or constables as in-charge of small areas within a police station. The model of patrolling will be such that patrol teams could reach the spots of incidents within 10-to-12 minutes from the time of the crime,” he said.

Among the police stations where patrolling would be intensified would be Danapur, Patliputra, Rajiv Nagar and Agamkuan.