Civic volunteer headache keeps cops busy across state
Times of India | 12 November 2024
123 Kolkata: Santosh Lal Prasad, a civic volunteer of Entally police station, who was arrested on Sunday for allegedly sneaking into the home of a young woman in the dead of the night and trying to approach her bed, was the 10th civic volunteer to be suspended once the inquiry/probe is over in the past two-and-a-half-years. Prasad's ‘demobilisation' coincided with a civic volunteer in Sainthia violating the law by running an illegal facility to fill gas balloons at his home, where an explosion claimed the life of a neighbour.
The two incidents pointed at the "major headache" that civic volunteers continued to pose for both Kolkata and Bengal police, even three months after the arrest of civic volunteer Sanjay Roy for the rape and murder of a PGT doctor at RG Kar Hospital. While the Supreme Court has already ordered a prohibition on their deployment at hospitals and educational institutes, the recent state affidavit at SC suggests that while the process of their removal had started, some were still deployed at govt health facilities and educational institutes across Bengal.
Senior officers claimed the state was re-training civic volunteers—they add up to almost one lakh in Bengal—the focus being soft skills, along with law and physical aptitude. The affidavit claimed the state had started preparing "comprehensive guidelines". KP was supposed to start the 45-day training in Nov but pushed back the date to Dec-Jan for the festive season. "Ours will be a 21-day training in batches of 160-200 each," said a senior officer.
The charges against civic volunteers have been various, including that murder, rape, robbery, theft and extortion. Most recently, an allegedly drunk civic volunteer attached to Sinthee PS allegedly broke past a barricade on his bike on BT Road during an RG Kar protest.
In 2012, a year after Trinamool came to office in the state, the govt introduced civic police and village police forces. The primary objective of these forces was to "assist police". But retired police officers criticised the manner in which they were recruited—their educational criteria being Class VIII pass and their training being restricted to merely three weeks.
Following the RG Kar incident, several strictures were issued—from stopping them using police equipment to ensuring they are mostly assigned traffic duties, taking strict action against drunk and alcoholic personnel and taking stock of these men and women's mental and physical condition. "But even these measures seem to be falling short," said a former joint commissioner of police.
A retired IGP claimed, "The selection lacks transparency and standard procedures. Instead of written tests or appearing for interviews, the candidates are determined by the party in office from a list, leading to questionable recruitments. Consequently, many of these civic volunteers are engaged in criminal activities, undermining the integrity of the system."