GUWAHATI, June 30 � Growing incidents of deaths in police firing in different parts of Assam have become a matter of serious concern and a committee headed by a senior police officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police has been formed to look into the related issues and suggest measures to deal with the problem.
Director General of Assam Police, JN Choudhury told The Assam Tribune that for years, the Assam Police was dealing with militancy and a paradigm change is taking time. He admitted that in recent months, there have been a number of incidents of deaths in police firing while controlling crowds and this is a matter of serious concern. He said a committee headed by Additional Director General of Police Jyotirmoy Chakraborty, has been formed to look into the issues involved and to suggest measures to be taken to reduce deaths in police firing.
Choudhury said issues like availability of non-lethal weapons, deployment of weapons in the right places etc., have to be looked into seriously. He pointed out that only availability of non lethal weapons would not serve the desired purpose as those would have to be made available at the right places. The change in training methods would also have to be looked into and the police personnel have to be trained up to use non lethal weapons at the first stage and to use lethal weapons only as the last resort. At the same, he admitted that the deaths in police firing in Goalpara on the day of the Panchayat polls were large because of the fact that the forces available on the ground were limited. �Whenever we have enough force, we have to use less force to deal with a law and order situation,� he pointed out.
These issues were also discussed seriously in a recent meeting of the range IGs and DIGs and they have been instructed to make sure that the non lethal weapons available with the police force are used properly to deal with crowd control.
Interestingly, most of the personnel of the Central forces deployed in Assam are also not provided with non lethal weapons though they are often used in law and order duties including crowd control. The DGP revealed that the Central forces are deployed either in counter insurgency grade or law and order grade and the personnel are equipped accordingly. In Assam, the Central forces are deployed in Counter insurgency grade and they are only provided with lethal weapons, while, even the BSF personnel deployed along the border with Bangladesh are provided with non lethal weapons like pump action guns. The State Government has already written to the Centre to provide non lethal weapons to the forces deployed in Assam.
