A peep into police stations in state

We could learn many facts hitherto unknown to us from your staff reporter, Guwahati published in your esteemed daily, (The Sentinel, December 9) under headlines, ‘A Peep into Police Stations in State’. From the report it transpires that the police are compelled to take recourse to corruption to meet certain expenditure to be incurred by them there being no chance of reimbursement. The meal served to a lock up person, the cost of handling and disposal (cremation or burial) of a dead body where sweepers charge not less than Rs. 4000.00 per body. Only the officers-in-charge or other officials of the police station have to bear the expenditure whereas the Railways pays Rs. 5,000 to the RPF (Railway Protection Force) to perform the last rights of each unclaimed body found in the trains. Again the stolen vehicles, if found by the police, have to be dragged to hand it over to the owner. Since the government does not make any payment, the police station concerned has to bear the expenditure incurred for hiring the crane. The use of Mobile phone by police personnel is an indispensable necessity, cost of which is never reimbursed by the government. At the same time, each police station is supposed to be equipped with a land-line phone but in most of the police stations it is conspicuous by its absence. In additions, all the police stations are required to purchase the required stationeries, have to pay for sweeping and cleansing the police stations and for us we like to add, the police are required to iron their cloths, have to purchase fuel to move here and there on duty and for carrying out inquiry from the money of the pocket. From your staff-reporter we could learn a very funny fact that the government reimburses the bill of meal served to a lock-up person @Rs.1.25 per meal. But the police with their less man-power cannot afford (not interested?) to prepare the funny bill.

Ashok Bordoloi

Dibrugarh