Nearly 200 Sub-Inspector ranked officers needed in twin city in controlling crimes: Police

Bhubaneswar: The rising incidents of crime figures have deteriorated law and order control in the twin cities Bhubaneswar-Cuttack because of acute shortage of skilled sub-inspectors (SIs), who investigate series of cases in police stations.

Nearly 200 more posts of SIs needs to be filled up to carry out many tasks like investigation, crime prevention, day and night patrolling, Traffic control, documentation and many more in the twin city, informed a senior officer, requesting anonymity.

In addition to these, SIs are also engaged in VIP duty, road blocking, passport verification cells, Mahila and Sishu desks and senior citizen security cells.

He said though there are crunch of staff in his police station, examining a case followed by investigation is a hell of task for him that results to pending of many cases. Sometimes they have to work for traffic duty for eight hours instead of spending time for crime prevention in their police station jurisdiction, he added.

"Though the government is impressing upon strengthening of Mahila and Sishu desks, it is yet to start the recruitment process of SIs," the officer further added.

Sources said nearly 2,300 surplus cases are pending in Bhubaneswar police stations, while nearly 1,750 cases are waiting to be solved in Cuttack police stations.

Though the new twin city commissioner Dr Rajendra Prasad Sharma is planning basic policing that needs to get revamp to arrest the riding crime graph, their required more 60 percent sub-inspectors ranked officers from the present strength to tackle bulk crime in twin city with the help of 41 police stations under it.

In addition to this Dillip Behera, an officer-in-charge of Excise department said due to acute staff shortage in police stations sometimes they have to perform other tasks like dacoity cases apart from drugs and narcotics cases.

"Unless the government separates law and order from crime prevention, policing will not improve," Behera said.

An inquiry from police sources revealed that against the sanctioned strength of 139 SIs in Bhubaneswar, there are only 77 present at 21 police stations. While 58 were present in the entire city of Cuttack against 100 sanctioned strength of SIs.   

Though some 120-odd new SI recruits are on the verge of completing their training, the commissionerate police is unlikely to get a single sub-inspector, as the government is planning to dispatch them to Maoist-hit districts.

Admitting that the Commissonerate police is facing a shortage of manpower twin City Commissioner R P Sharma said he would request the Police Headquarters to fill up vacant posts of SIs in the twin cities and they are making an assessment of the vacancies.