PATIALA, July 28: An inter-state plan has been finalised between Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh to set up 31 police check posts at vulnerable points for coordinated operations, to tackle crime in the region.Special check posts would be set up at identified spots in Patiala, Ropar, Fatehgarh Sahib, Candigarh, Panchkula and Ambala. These posts would have manned vehicles which would be in a state of readiness 24 hours a day and would be manned round-the-clock. Information on crime would be passed on to these check posts on special wireless sets that would work on a separate communication system so that it remains effective and is not jammed. This would ensure that information would be passed from one post to the other within seconds and a criminal or a vehicle could be tracked down within minutes of the crime being committed.The decision to set up these check posts was taken at a meeting of the SSPs of Patiala, Ambala, Panchkula, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ropar and Fatehgarh Sahib held at Rajpura last week. Deputy Inspector General of Police, Patiala Range, Rajinder Singh presided over the meeting.Stating this at a press conference here today, SSP Patiala said the plan was expected to become operational within one week. He said the scheme would be of immense importance in tracking down car thefts as information about these would be passed on the check posts within minutes while earlier it used to take up to two hours for information to go from one district to the other.Sidhu said that a follow-up meeting would soon be held at Ambala which would be attended by the district police chiefs of all the six districts and details to streamline the scheme would be worked out at the meeting. It would also provide an opportunity to the district police chiefs to share information on terrorist activities and law and order.Claiming that there had been a decrease in the rate of crime in the district after the spurt in robberies about a month back, Sidhu said that the district police had decided to start a Community Security Scheme under which former police personnel and SPOs would be engaged for security purpose. He said various residential colonies had given an encouraging response to this scheme and had agreed to pay the securityman Rs 10 per household. These securitymen would be trained by the police and given a weapon by the police. Thus the residents would not need to do voluntary patrol duty to guard against thefts.Sidhu said that the police had also been holding meetings with residents and briefing them on how to do patrol duty. In certain areas, policemen had been deployed to help the residents in doing patrol duty. Referring to the recent incidents of robberies in the City, Sidhu said that in certain cases it had been found that some robbers had been indulging in robberies despite having served jail terms in earlier cases.Sidhu said that the district police had apprehended eight gangs of burglars during the first seven months of the current year. SP (Detective) Kewal Kumar who headed the special team constituted for the purpose said that three persons had been arrested for committing various robberies in two electronic shops in the city, one electronic shop in Nabha and a house in the urban estate here.
