Gearing up to thwart any terrorist attack like Gurdaspur in neighbouring Punjab, Himachal Pradesh Police are contemplating to constitute a Special Action Group (SAG).

According to sources, Himachal Police have prepared a proposal to increase readiness of its personnel in countering in any terrorist attack on its police stations or any other major installations in the state. “Senior Police officials have chalked out a plan to enhance vigil and promptness in dealing with any untoward incidents in the state,” sources said.

Himachal Police had sent a proposal to the state government for providing logistics and manpower to deal with such exigencies as the Department needs to be on high alert keeping in view the heightened tensions with neighbouring country, Pakistan.

“We are aiming to strengthen police force in terms of training to the staff deployed at police stations, modern weaponry and strengthening existing intelligence network,” a Police high up said on terms of anonymity.

Besides this, it has been proposed to provide weapon training to lower ranked policemen and maintaining proper record of all Police personnel who had received training. “Many a times, it has been seen that there was no proper record of police officials who had undergone various training courses as weapons training or commando training. It sometimes leads to confusion as some officials receive such training twice or are recommended for the training again,” sources added.

So far, Himachal Police officials have been provided with modern crime scene investigation and marking the crime spots. Shimla Police, in fact, had gone ahead with modernization of traffic cops and had provided them  camera to avoid false complaints and also the harassment of general public.

Senior Police officials are now examining the possibility of enabling Police officials at inter-states barriers and other strategic locations with these cameras.

It is worthwhile to mention here that the investigations into the terrorist attack at police station in Gurdaspur, Punjab in which seven policemen were killed, had exposed the ill-preparedness of the Punjab Police to tackle such a situation.

The report had also pointed out towards shortage of weapons, manpower and latest equipment along with security lapse and intelligence failure.

Besides this, it was noticed that almost all districts of Punjab were short of over 100 policemen and many lower-ranked policemen had participated in mandatory weapon training.

Sanjeev Kumar