Staff crunch confronting revenue police in revenue police area and lack of training for the existing staff keeps telling upon its functioning across the state. Statistics reveals that the nature of crimes has been undergoing a sea-change with newer and newer technologies coming at the disposal of the tech-savvy miscreants. Besides, compounding on the worry, crime rates have shown a spiraling trend with at least five times increase having been reported in the revenue police area.
Alive to the gravity of the developing crime graph, the state government is going to send a proposal to the Centre for the modernisation of revenue police in the state.
A revenue sub-inspector said that the British government had introduced revenue police in 1861 with the creation of three posts like revenue inspector, revenue sub-inspector and a fourth class employee for collecting revenue from the residents and to put a check on crimes while maintaining law and order in the mountainous parts. The revenue police was executing its work effectively with the cooperation from Pradhan and prominent persons of the society. But now the situation is different, he said.
Now culprits commit crimes by using mobile phone and escape from the scene before the crimes are detected. Due to shortage of technology and lack of technical skill,revenue police are finding it difficult to rise to the occasion. According to revenue police, “We need four or five days to collect the evidence of crimes committed by the offenders and by then the criminals take refuge in big cities.”
Uttarakhand Pravati Patwari/Revenue Police Cadre Employees Federation general secretary Shankar Dutt Kapri said crunch of staff in the revenue police area and lack of training of revenue police have resulted in the force remaining hamstrung. “Earlier, Pradhan and prominent persons of the society were cooperating with revenue police, but now such cooperation is rare. Around 50-60 per cent of the posts in the revenue are vacant and no initiative is being taken by the state government to fill them. According to him, apart from recruitment on vacant posts, the State Government should give
training to revenue police on investigation and skill for collecting evidences scientifically.Apart from construction of buildings, government should provide lockers, hand-cuffs, computers, and other equipment to deal with the crime cases being reported now-a- days. This will help the police to act swiftly and solve the cases without delay. He,however, expressed satisfaction that the state government has recently sent a proposal to the Centre for the modernisation of revenue police.
It should be mentioned here that Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat had recently submitted a proposal seeking Rs 25 crore and a share of the expenditure in the ratio of 90:10 between Centre and state government for modernisation of civil police and revenue police and up-gradation of existing infrastructure of disaster management among others. This is required because the State is sharing frontiers with Nepal and China, it was stressed.
State Additional secretary home S Bansal said that in the proposal, the government has sought Rs 25 crore under plan and non- plan counts for purposes which include modernisation of revenue police. In the proposal, lock up, hand-cuff, repair and construction of revenue police posts, training for revenue police on investigation and increase in manpower, including revenue police inspector sub- inspector, constable, recruitment of home guards, PRD jawans as revenue police among others have been included, he added.