Malout police inaccessible through landline

Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Malout, February 13

If a person witnesses a crime or meets with a road accident, the first thing he/she instinctively does is to make a phone call to the police. But, here in Malout town, either the landline telephone installed at the city police station has gone out of order or police officials are so reluctant that they don’t care to take the call.

To check the reality, when this correspondent made phone calls on the landline number (01637-264503) of the Malout (City) police station at 7:43 pm, 7:59 pm and 8:03 pm on Monday, nobody picked it even once.

When asked about the reason by dialing (01633-263622), the policeman at the Police Control Room (PCR) in Muktsar gave the cell phone number of a head constable posted at the Malout (City) police station.

However, he could not tell the reason behind no response over the police station’s landline telephone number.

Meanwhile, repeated attempts to contact inspector Boota Singh, SHO, Malout (City) police station, over his cell phone (9814466065) too proved futile.

In this situation, when called, the head constable posted as ‘munshi’ at the police station, after finding his cell phone number from the district police official website, replied, “The landline telephone is working. It may have, however, gone out of order due to last night’s showers. There may be some problem in the wiring.”

His statement also showed that he was not exactly aware if the phone was not working.

Interestingly, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh in Chandigarh had yesterday rolled out the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) project for tracking of crime and criminals.

An official spokesperson of the state government, after this development, even claimed that the Punjab Police have taken a digital leap in strengthening its capabilities to meet the contemporary law and order challenges.