PATNA: Altogether 99 police stations and police outposts in Bihar have gone ‘missing’! This startling fact came to light when officials of a private company that has been awarded contract of installation of CCTV cameras at police stations in the state visited the locations for their work recently.The officials of Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) were taken aback when they couldn’t find buildings of police station or any police outpost at the specified locations in 28 districts for installation of CCTV camera.
Finally, they submitted a report to the state police headquarters stating therein that they have failed to trace 62 police stations and 37 police outposts in 28 out of the 40 police districts in Bihar. The CCTV cameras are being installed in all notified police stations under Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System (CCTNS) of the centre. The report submitted by TASL prompted the police headquarters to initiate the process of physical verification of the police stations and outpost that were ‘missing’ despite their names included in the list. There are 925 police stations and 250 outposts in the state.
DIG, State Crime Record Bureau, wrote all SPs of the districts concerned last week asking them to furnish detailed information about the ‘missing’ police stations and police outposts at the earliest.For example, Singhchak and Bannu Bagicha police stations in Lakhisarai were not found at the addresses. Likewise, Chanan railway police station under Jamalpur rail district was non-existent. Jamalpur superintendent of rail police Amir Javed said the Chanan railway police station could not be made operational despite it being notified. He attributed the reason to non-operation of railway traffic.
An ADG rank officer, who is in know of the matter, said, “At times, police stations are shifted to some other locations as they don’t have buildings of their own. Moreover, it is a time consuming process to make any police station or police outpost fully operational.”