New Director General of police of Uttarakhand who is likely to assume charge on Monday with the incumbent MA Ganapathy on his way out would have several challenges awaiting him, say the police department insiders.
The principal one is related to the incidents of ATM cloning through which amounts are supposed to have been spirited away from the accounts of over hundred people in a span of a few days in Dehradun. With the accused gang involved in such cases remaining elusive, the new DGP must go headlong in not just nabbing the culprits but ensuring that such high-tech crimes do not recur. This aside, the purported Maoist challenge thrown in the face of the police in a number of hill areas in Almora, Bageshwar and Nainital districts in Kumaon in the form of provocative posters and graffiti pasted on the walls of the important Government buildings is another that the new DGP must take head- on. Significantly, none of the accused extremists has been brought to book so far, though such incidents are happening at regular intervals with the purported extremists taking advantage of the hill areas remaining under the jurisdiction of Revenue Police. Police insiders further say that with land-related frauds happening thick and fast across the State, reining in such frauds would be another major challenge for the new DGP. Importantly, soon after assuming charge, Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had directed the State police brass to clamp down on such cases with a heavy hand. However, things are far from being controlled with the Economic Offense Wing, constituted at the Police Headquarters level to deal with such cases, not yet being functional. Observers opine that the SIT formed by the previous Government to curb the growing number of land forgery cases has been reduced to a forum of reconciliation with hardly any action being taken against the land sharks, out to grab lands of the common people by hook or by crook. Besides, with Dehradun fast turning into a hub of narcotics with their peddlers supplying them to the students with impunity, the new State police chief must take serious initiatives to stop the unfortunate trend of the students falling prey to the dreaded contraband addiction. Rash and drunk driving on the roads of the State taking toll of lives nearly daily must be curbed with an iron hand too by the police under its new chief, observers say. They further say that the laidback attitude of the police is emboldening the traffic rule violators to trash the rules with CPU remaining conspicuous by its invisibility.