District police on Thursday made strict security arrangements to ensure smooth note exchange procedure in various banks. The district police have deployed additional police force beside setting up a control room at Sakchi police station on Thursday.
Superintendent of Police (city) Prashant Anand said district police personnel were deployed in each of the over 300 branches of the banks across the city from 8 am.
“We have maintained a strict vigil at the banks. Apart from the district police, we have kept two units (60 jawans) of Quick Response Teams (QRT) in reserve at Bistupur and Sakchi police stations for meeting any incident in the wake of the huge turnout of account holders at the bank branches for getting their currency notes exchanged,” said Anand.
The City SP said that at each of the bank branches they have deputed two to three policemen for maintaining the queue of the bank customers.
“We are prepared to face every situation. We have set up special squads of policemen to escort cash-carrying vehicles from the main branches of various banks located in Bistupur to the branches spread across the city. We have instructed the tiger mobile (cops on bike) to keep on patrolling in the vicinity of banks,” he said.
According to information, senior SP Anoop T Mathew had held a meeting of bank managers at his chamber late on Wednesday night to chalk out strategy to handle the rush across the city. During the meeting that lasted for two hours, Mathew had taken suggestions from the bank managers for making necessary security arrangement to handle the rush at banks without any trouble.
Moreover, the private security guards posted at most of the banks had a role to play in the exercise of currency note exchange at the bank.
Meanwhile, despite long queues of customers in most of the branches, no untoward incident was reported from any of the 300 plus branches across the city.