DIBRUGARH, June 7 � Following a recent incident of cash snatching near the Dibrugarh main branch of the State Bank of India, the police here came up with a controversial solution: ban use of mobiles by bank customers inside the SBI main branch here! Following this, hundreds of bonafide customers have had to suffer humiliation at the bank, as if they were criminals.
A police official, when asked about the matter, said senior citizens and journalists are exempt from the ban. However, this raises the moot question: What about the others? The State Bank main branch here is visited by thousands of customers every day, and a majority of them are not senior citizens or journalists. And neither can they all be suspected to be criminals.
This brings one to the funny situation of our cops arriving at hasty and harebrained solutions to common law and order situations. Take for example the state wide ban on pillion riding. Just because some militants at one time are alleged to have used bikes to carry out their terrorist activities, the administration thought it fit to impose a ban on pillion riding.
Several State Bank customers here today told this newspaper that the least the bank could do was to appropriately publicize the police diktat, but this has not been done. With almost all the fifteen State Bank ATMs in the city functioning faultily, customers have to go to the bank, and what they get are red eyes and terse commands. What the State Bank main branch here lacks is an efficient and discreet security mechanism: one hopes this would be looked into by the bank authorities. Additionally, the State Bank here needs to install more ATMs across the city and ensure that these are functional and dispense cash, not regret slips.
