By Sumit Kumar Singh, IANS,
New Delhi : Night after night, they put up barricades, keep an eye on criminals and patrol the main roads. They are Delhi Police’s bike patrolling team that spreads out to almost every place of this metropolis after sunset with a simple modus operandi – stop, question and check.
The officers stop bikers riding without helmets, or drivers without seat belts and ask for identification. If satisfied, they politely ask them to leave for their homes.
But if anything arouses their suspicion, they march the men to the police station.
This tactic – stop, question and check – has been Delhi Police’s traditional night patrol mechanism. In the last three months, for example, around 90 criminals have been nabbed at night by these teams.
“Many auto-lifters, burglars and proclaimed offenders were arrested during patrolling at night,” Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police and Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat told IANS.
There are others who assist the bike-borne cops on foot in the inner roads, many of them newly recruited. Yet others, even deeper within the urban grid, navigate the dark allies, silently patrolling slum areas.
With 182 police stations across the city, police set up nearly 730 temporary barricades every night.
“On an average, four temporary barricades are put up in one police station area. The number may be higher, depending on the area,” Bhagat said.
Around two-three bike teams from each police station are deployed for night patrol. The number is higher in crime-prone areas of outer districts, Badarpur and east Delhi.
Delhi Police are an 80,000-strong force. The traffic police too are putting up temporary barricades to book offenders.
“In an effort to rid the city of drunk driving, we carried out simultaneous checking at about 50 locations Saturday night,” Joint Commissioner of Police Satyendra Garg said.
“In just three hours, we detected 307 violations, 195 of which were for drunken driving, 35 for dangerous driving, 60 for no entry restrictions and 17 for other violations,” he said.
“A total of 64 vehicles were impounded,” he added.
But what do Delhiites think about this drive?
Pankaj Verma, 31, who works for an event management company and often travels late at night, said the more the number of barricades, the safer he feels.
“We welcome the police,” he said. “I think 99 percent of people in Delhi do. But then there’s also a problem because police can stop you any time.”
Said Social activist Vimal Kumar: “There are, to be sure, plenty of reasons for the police to be out in force, and plenty of reasons for us to want them there.”
Last month, for example, the police stopped three people – Kuldeep Singh, 22, Nitin Kumar, 21, and Surender Kumar, 35 – at DDA market Sector-13, Rohini in north Delhi during one such night check.
“One of them opened fire on our patrol team. The bullet did not hit any of the member. All of them were overpowered,” a police officer said.
During interrogation, police found that the men were not ordinary hoodlums, but had committed many burglaries in the trans-Yamuna area, Ghaziabad, Noida, Meerut and even Mumbai.
“Sometimes, people don’t approve regular stops at temporary barricades. We have told our officers to maintain a database of people of a particular area who often travel late at night. We generally don’t stop them,” he added.
Agrees Aayush Anand, 33, a businessman who recently shifted from Gurgaon to Patparganj in east Delhi.
“Earlier, the police used to stop my car and question me almost every night. It was very irritating. But now they don’t ask for my papers every time they see my car,” he said.
(Sumit Kumar Singh can be contacted at [email protected])