City police stations on high alert

Ranchi: All police stations have been put on high alert following a directive from the home ministry that was issued after the terror attack on a police station in Punjab on Monday.
Police spokesperson S N Pradhan said security at bus terminals, railway stations and airports and other important buildings has been tightened.
However, cops at important police stations in the city looked unaffected by the attack in Punjab’s Gurdaspur that killed seven persons, including the superintendent of police, on Monday.
There was no security guard at the entrance gate of Kotwali police station — Raj Bhavan is under the jurisdiction of this PS — when this coorespondent visited at 3.30pm on Monday.
The driveway leading to the room of the officer-in-charge did not have a single policeman. In an adjacent room, two cops were chatting and paid no heed to the visitor.
The picture at Dhurwa, Jagannathpur, Lalpur and a few other police stations, visited by the correspondent, was similar. This is despite several alerts and warnings by senior officials.
Asked about the lax security at Kotwali PS on Monday, OC Vijay Kumar said, “We tighten security at night. If we tighten security of the police station during the day, it will deter visitors.”
It is not just Ranchi. Most of the police stations in urban areas neither have sentry posts nor watch towers.
Some policemen, particularly constables, roam around in plain clothes without their firearms, violating guidelines.
“Security guards are important but intelligence is also important. We have sounded an alert and asked police officers to be alert about suspicious movement,” said OC Kumar.
Jharkhand recently came to the spotlight after suspected terrorists were arrested from Ranchi in connection with the blasts at Narendra Modi’s rally site in Patna in October 2013.
In the past too, terror links were traced to Jharkhand. In 2002, two suspected terrorists, who were celebrating the attack on the American Cultural centre in Kolkata two days before, were gunned down by a special team of Delhi police in Hazaribag.
A retired IPS officer who does not want to be named said, “The prevailing state of affairs is similar to the ideal situation a terrorist group requires to capture a police station where they hope to get a lot of arms and ammunition.”
On the domestic security front, these police stations are equally vulnerable considering the recent attempts of the activists of the People’s Liberation Front of India, a breakaway faction of the CPI(Maoist), to open its explosive storage centre in Patna.
Kamal Kishore, the chief of Jharkhand police association, said a fool-proof security mechanism requires sustainable infrastructure that many of the police stations situated in urban areas lack.
“The police stations do not have walled campus, sentry posts and other required infrastructure. The government should pay attention to it,” Kishore said.
He was, however, quick to add that the state police are “battle-hardened thanks to the ongoing war against Left-wing extremists”.
“The police stations in Maoist dens are well-protected,” Kishore said.