Bijay Kumar Sharma, a 1986-batch IPS officer, Thursday took charge as the Director General of Police at a special function at the police headquarters in Cuttack. Sharma, the 32nd DGP of Odisha, has held many important posts in the police establishment. He has also worked as a CBI SP between 2005 and 2006. In a tete-a-tete with Gyan Ranjan Mohapatra of Orissa POST, Sharma outlined steps to strengthen policing in the state. Excerpts:
You have been given additional charge of DG of Police along with DG, Fire Services and Home Guards. How are you going to manage the responsibilities?
I don’t have to manage both for long. After completion of certain formalities, I will be relieved of the post of DG, Fire Services and Home Guards, and it will not be an extra burden on me.
How will you reduce the huge number of pending cases – about 40-50 per cent- at police stations awaiting investigation?
I am not sure about the exact number of cases pending in which charge-sheets are yet to be submitted. This depends on the availability of manpower at police stations. There are several police stations where only three to four officers are available for investigation. Recently, we have tried to engage graduate constables in investigation duty after a three-month training to deal with the staff crunch. However, it witnessed very poor response as only 500 applications were received. This has to be increased to speed up investigation.
Recently, several incidents have occurred in the state in which journalists as well as common people faced police misbehaviour. How you are going to tackle it?
Not only journalists, but the cops at police stations and other places should behave well, and we need a change in the mindset of officials for better behaviour. We will train the cops and motivate them to behave well. We will reward cops who showed good behaviour and punish those who err. It is an important task for me and I will personally talk to constables and officials of higher ranks on this.
Odisha Police has been in the line of fire for many years for its extremely poor conviction rate. How can you increase the conviction rate?
Quality investigation is the clue. The witnesses, after being assured of full security to life, should be produced in courts for an effective judicial process. This needs concerted efforts.
There are some problems in implementation of the CCTNS project as there is lack of trained staff even if gadgets are available in some places.
We have made significant improvement in implementing the CCTNS project which will definitely be our major focus in future.
The rising crime under Commissionerate Police is a major challenge. Your take.
The increase in crime is natural with the rapid expansion of the city and its changing demography. Shortage of manpower is also a problem. We will increase patrolling in the twin cities and provide all help to the Commissionerate Police.
What measures are you going to take to address the rising cybercrimes in the state?
We will try to establish cyber police stations in each district. We will also organise more training programmes like we did in the recent past in order to augment the capabilities of our officials to deal with the cybercrime investigation, which requires advanced technological knowhow.