GUWAHATI: No police station from Assam features in the list of top 10 police stations in the country. The list was released recently by the Union Home Ministry.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh released the list of top 10 performing police stations across the nation during the annual DG and IG conference held in Gujarat on December 20. The home minister awarded the police officers of the three best-performing police stations in the country during the conference.
Interestingly, Assam had failed to feature in the list in the previous year as well and Guwahati citizens couldn’t agree more with the list, putting the blame on the allegedly corrupt police officials.
"The main priority of Assam police, specifically Guwahati police, is to make money out of challans. So I guess it doesn't really matter which police station the award goes to. However, compared to the male cops, I feel that the female ones are doing a far better job," expressed Debojit Das, a resident of Guwahati, speaking to G Plus.
Reports stated that the list was prepared by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) after careful scrutiny of the work done by the police stations to judge the best and deserving ones in the country. The IB collected data from state agencies to judge the best-performing police stations before filtering and picking the top 10 in the country.
Commenting on Assam police stations not making it to the list, Guwahati Commissioner of Police, Pradip Saloi told G Plus, “They have different parameters for judging police stations’ work. Maybe we could not fulfil some of the parameters and hence could not get selected. We are trying our best to make it to the list for the next time.”
The Kalu Police Station (Rajasthan) grabbed the top spot on the list and inspector Parmeshwar Suthar, the Station House Officer (SHO) of Kalu Police Station collected the top honour from the minister.
The second spot on the list was secured by Campbell Bay (Andaman & Nicobar Islands), followed by Farakka (West Bengal), Nettapakkam (Puducherry), Guderi (Karnataka), Chopal (Himachal Pradesh), Lakheri (Rajasthan), Periyakulam (Tamil Nadu), Munsyari (Uttarakhand) and Churchorem (Goa).
Over 80% Guwahatians feel city police is corrupt, reveals survey
In the month of July 2018, G Plus had conducted a survey titled “Let's Talk Guwahati” in which over 10,000 respondents took part through both online and offline mediums.
When asked, "Do you think city police is corrupt?" 81.2 percent of the total sample had said that the city police is corrupt, according to them. Among these 81.2 percent a total of 15.6 percent of the respondents had said that city police is completely corrupted. Further, 22.4 percent of the respondents had said that most of the police is corrupt and the remaining 43.2% had said that some of the city police officials are corrupt, not all of them.
Merely 18.8% of Guwahatians feel that the city police is not corrupt, revealed the survey.
Many of the respondents alleged that corruption is most prevalent in the sectors of traffic and passport.
“I believe that most of the city traffic cops are unaware of the sections and rules under which fines should be charged. So they end up demanding eye rolling fines,” Aditya Saraf, a resident of GS Road expressed.
“Recently, when I got my bike from Delhi to Guwahati, I had to face a similar incident. Although the High Court has directed that any private vehicle can ply on the road without an NOC for 11 months, the city police demanded a fine of Rs 3,000 which I refused to pay. Later, I had to collect my bike from the police station after producing all valid documents and also had to inform them of the High Court’s order with proof. I’d say that this is nothing but an excuse to loot the citizens in any possible way,” he further informed G Plus.
Residents are facing a tough time with the passport verification process in the city. They have alleged that bribes are being taken for police verification across different police stations in the city.
A city resident, Yash Jain, informed G Plus that after a smooth verification process at the regional passport office, the police verification process took a lot of time for him. He said that at the police verification stage, when he went for the verifications of his documents at the Bharalumukh police station, the police officials demanded a bribe.
“When I went for police verification, they asked for Rs 500 to verify the documents for each passport but I did not pay them. I suspect that because I refused to bribe the police they delayed my passport,” said Jain.
Jain received his passport 40 days later, after approaching the Kamrup Metro SP office with his query.
When approached, officer-in-charge of Bharalumukh police station, Manikant Chamuah, said that they will now conduct the passport verification online which would be a huge relief to the residents.
Further, regarding the alleged bribes being asked for by the police officials, he said that he has instructed the personnel in his police station not to take any bribe from anyone.