As many as 80 Gram Rakshak Dal (GRD) jawans attached to four police stations in Surat district were dismissed on an order from Surat district Superintendent of Police (SP) Hitesh Joyser Wednesday for dereliction of duty that came to light after a case registered at Kosamba police station. In the case filed by Nilesh Raghvani, a resident of Tarsadi village in Mangrol taluka, he was on way with his friend Sunil Sonwane on August 15 when they were intercepted by four men posing as Local Crime Branch cops near Sanskardeep society gate at Tarsadi village. The four accused allegedly threatened to get the duo framed in a gambling case and took away cash Rs 30,000 from them. Kosamba police registered a case and arrested the four accused who were identified as Mangrol residents Aslam Shaikh and three GRD jawans Jaydevsinh Thakor, Vijay Bharwad and Hiren Patel. The GRD jawans were deployed for night duty patrolling on Palod road area, police said. After the incident, SP Josyer held night inspections at four police stations — Kosamba, Olpad, Mangrol and Kim, and found that some of the home guards deployed for duty were not present at the spot where they were mentioned. After collecting details, Joyser on Wednesday dismissed 80 jawans. Talking to The Indian Express, Joyser said, “There are over 700 GRD jawans working with different police stations in Surat. The jawans work is to do night patrolling and help the police with escorting prisoners to the courtrooms and other work. In the Kosamba police station case, the three jawans posed as police officials and took money from the complainant.” “We will hold recruitments soon to fill the vacancies. We have also started drive to find out such irregular activities by jawans in other seven police stations,” he added.
