By IANS,
Kolkata : The army has begun training West Bengal armed police personnel to combat insurgency in the state for the first time, an official said Sunday.
“The training has been given to select officials of the West Bengal armed police. Total three batches, comprising 100 police personnel in each, will undergo the training programme,” Group Captain R.K. Das, defence ministry spokesperson, told IANS here.
He said the duration of the training programme is one month and the first batch has already completed the course.
According to Eastern Command Headquarters sources here, the initiative was taken after the state government sought assistance from the army to train its armed police force officers to effectively counter insurgency-related problems in the state.
While the training programme for the first batch started in June this year, the third batch’s training will start from Aug 20.
“The army exercise comprises techniques of bomb detection and defusing, special vehicle checks to find out if it is carrying any explosives, road opening parties (ROP), field firing, jungle patrolling – to carry out critical operations in forest terrain and commando training also.
“This special exercise is being supervised by army officers who are experts in dealing with counter insurgency operations. This is the first time the army is giving such training to the state’s armed police personnel,” Das said, adding similar training has also been imparted to the Chhattisgarh state police by an ex-army officer to tackle Maoist guerrillas there.