Law and order in Punjab: A year of failures & embarrassments

Jupinderjit Singh

Chandigarh, December 26

The Punjab Police will not get many stars on the law and order front in 2022.

Their performance is under the scanner because it is the first year of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. But the police struggled in containing one after another incidents of target killings.

SHARP DIP IN CRIMINAL CASES, CLAIM POLICE

• Spokesperson IG Dr Sukhchain Singh said there was a sharp decline in crime incidents
• The number of murders this year reduced from 723 in 2021 to 654, kidnappings decreased from 1,787 to 1,645 and the number of FIRs came down from 73,581 last year to 71,827
• The police gunned down two shooters – Mannu Kusa and Jagroop Roopa of Moosewala and arrest Deepak Mundi from near Nepal
• The AGTF arrested 428 gangsters/criminals, busted 111 gangster/criminal modules and seized 411 weapons and 97 vehicles used in criminal activities
• Eighteen terrorist were modules busted and 119 alleged terrorists were nabbed

The image of the police, which was considered one of the best investigation forces, had been hit. The year saw the police lagging behind central agencies, especially the Delhi Police, which solved crime incidents in Punjab and nabbed many shooters and fugitives.

There were several embarrassing moments where a number of claims they made on crime control, alertness and investigations fell flat.

The first shocker came four days after the counting of votes went in favour of AAP and two days before Bhagwant Mann took over as the CM. Four assailants walked into a kabaddi field in the midst of a match watched by hundreds and shot dead international player Sandeep Singh Nangal Ambian.

The government had hardly settled when miscreants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Punjab Police Headquarters in Mohali on May 9. This was the direct challenge to the police as its second highest office was targeted.

In just another 20 days, six shooters killed famous Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala in Mansa on May 29. This came just a day after the AAP government had reduced his security along with more than 400 others. AAP leaders and media managers had claimed that they ended the VIP culture of keeping security guards but it boomeranged. The incident cost police chief DGP VK Bhawra.

Their image had further suffered a jolt as target killings continued and a Shiv Sena leader was gunned down in Amritsar, a sacrilege accused in Faridkot, a trader in Jalandhar, who refused to pay ransom to gangsters, and a youth killed by kidnappers in Muktsar.

The Delhi Special Police Cell caught the killers of Ambian, three of the six shooters of Sidhu Moosewala and the persons involved in the RPG attack at Mohali and also the killers of a Dera Sacha Sauda follower.

The police also had to take back their words on claims of detention of gangster Goldy Brar in the USA.

Police spokesperson IG Dr Sukhchain Singh said there was a sharp decline in criminal incidents and the internal security had busted 18 terror modules with the arrest of 119 terrorist/radicals after recovering 43 rifles, 220 revolvers/pistols, 13 tiffin improvised explosive devices (IEDs), 24.5-kg RDX and other explosives, 37 hand grenades, two sleeves of disposed rocket launcher, 22 drones and 23 vehicles.

The police had arrested 16,798 drug smugglers/suppliers, including 2,316 big fish after registering 12,171 FIRs, including 1,374 commercials.

He said police teams had recovered 582-kg heroin from across the state. Additionally, 147.5-kg heroin was recovered by teams of the police from seaports of Gujarat and Maharashtra, taking the total effective recovery of heroin to 729.5 kg in a year, he added. The police had arrested 955 POs/absconders under the NDPS cases.