New Delhi: The Madhya Pradesh Police arrested around 9,500 persons, booked under several offences across the central state, with more than 1,000 in Bhopal alone, in a first ever coordinated operation, that took place in the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday, ThePrint has learnt.
Sources in the MP Police said the arrested people include 6,000 criminals against whom arrest warrants were pending. This also includes about 100 absconding criminals, 200 wanted criminals with rewards against their name, and more than 1,000 other criminals.
According to the sources, more than 17,000 police personnel were deployed for a state-wide patrolling operation and raids were conducted at the same time across multiple locations in the state. Coordinating with the policemen on the ground were about 450 gazetted officers including additional director generals of various zones, deputy inspector generals, and superintendents of police, they said.
“All of those arrested have cases against them. Teams were formed under the instructions of Director General of Police (DGP) Sudhir Saxena and the units were sent to designated areas to arrest the accused who had warrants against them,” one of the sources said.
“Although it is a regular feature to execute pending arrest warrants and make arrests of people who have been absconding, history sheeters and wanted criminals, but this was the first time when a plan at this scale was executed and it resulted in so many arrests,” the source added.
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How the crackdown was planned
Senior police officials said that while the execution took place in one night, the planning and formulation started only 3-4 days earlier. “Some of those arrested had permanent arrest warrants against them issued by the court with different kinds of offences registered against them,” another source said.
For the execution, the local police were directed to form a list of all those against whom warrants were pending. “Police personnel at the local police stations prepared these lists. These warrants are otherwise also executed. This was a statewise concerted effort to execute all the pending warrants at the same time.
“Certain precautions had to be taken to execute this drive — formation of teams, extra force has to be pulled and take special care that people — ladies, children and the elderly aren’t in any way harassed during the execution,” the officer said.
As many as 1,024 people were arrested in a span of six hours in Bhopal for which over 1,000 police personnel were deployed, the police said.
Officially, the MP Police said that it was done on the DGP’s instructions to maintain law and order in the state. “All the Zonal ADGs/IGs, DIGs, SPs, SDOPs, Station House Officers and all the officers/employees of Bhopal and Indore Police Commissionerates of the state were involved,” read an official press release.
“The operation was conducted with the aim of maintaining security, peace as well as law and order by ensuring the arrest of missing criminals, execution of permanent and arrest warrants and checking of criminals who were externed from one district to another,” the official release said.
In Bhopal, the DGP along with Police Commissioner Makrand Deoskar reached Hanuman Ganj police station at 2 am in the night and took stock of combing patrolling and spoke to all the zonal Inspector-Generals at 3 am for getting information about combing patrolling in their districts.
“For combing patrolling, systematic briefing was done by gathering maximum police force at all the district headquarters, different teams were formed and sent for combing patrolling after giving information about the action to be taken,” the police statement said..
(Edited By Tony Rai)
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