IPS Dr Atul Verma joined as Director General of Police, Himachal Pradesh today and said the drug menace and cybercrime must be dealt with on priority in the state.
Dr Verma is an IPS officer (1991 batch) of the Himachal cadre and is an MBBS doctor. He belongs to Jharkhand.
Talking to media persons in Shimla, Dr Verma said the new assignment was a challenge as well as an opportunity for him. He said the Policing in Himachal Pradesh has always been good, which could be seen by the outcome in different parameters as per assessment at the national level also. “I will take this tradition forward and focus on the emerging crimes so that the state remains the best,” he said.
Asked about the increasing drug menace in the state, the new DGP said he was posted in the state CID before this, which has a state-level narcotic wing. “We have made a detailed plan to check the drug menace.
We will try to implement it phase by phase. Our focus would be on the demand side. Until the demand reduces, we can’t check the problem in toto. For this, we will take various initiatives. Right from school children to counsellors’ training to better de-addiction centres, stigma, and outpatient treatment for addicts by involving doctors and rehabilitation, we will try to intervene actively on these fronts.
We will simultaneously work on three aspects of the drug problem- demand reduction, enforcement to check the supply and the treatment & rehabilitation for better strategy,” he said.
The DGP said after drugs, cybercrime was another cause of concern at present. “Fortunately, we don’t have organised gangs or organised crime in the state. We have victims of online frauds in the state and the frauds are being committed from outside. The number of complaints in this regard in the state is quite high, approximately 60,000 in a year. We will certainly take it up also on priority,” he said.
Replying to a question about the law and order in the state given the recent incident of a person attacking a girl multiple times with a sickle in the daytime at the Palampur bus stand, the DGP said the law and order in Himachal Pradesh has always been good and there is no organised crime in the state. “The girls are safe in Himachal Pradesh. The girls use public transport in large numbers in the state, which speaks for itself.
This is not the situation in other states. Yet we need to take the stray incidents of such crime against girls seriously and take strict action,” he said. He added that he would review the said interpersonal incident, which happened recently, and see that proper investigation is done into it to ensure that the guilty is punished.
Follow us
