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Walkout over dacoities in Bhopal

Staff Correspondent

Chief Minister says security in the city has been beefed up

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan told the State Assembly on Monday that his Government had taken a serious note of the recent dacoity incidents in the State capital. He said police patrolling has been beefed up across the city to ensure that such incidents do not occur in future.

The Chief Minister was replying to a debate held through a calling attention notice over a series of dacoity incidents that have rocked different city neighbourhoods in the recent past.

After the Chief Minister's reply, the Opposition members led by the leader of the Opposition, Jamuna Devi, staged a walkout. The Chief Minister said that the available police force was not adequate to handle the law and order needs of the growing population and announced the State Government's plan to recruit on priority 2,000 additional policemen to augment the force. The calling attention notice was moved by the Congress party's Sajjan Singh Verma, Rajesh Patel and Satyadev Katare. The Opposition MLAs drew the attention of the House towards two dacoity incidents and gave details of how the house of a former Collector of Bhopal was targeted by a gang of dacoits on July 3 followed by an armed robbery at a local cinema owner's residence on July 19. On the midnight of July 17-18, a gang of highway thugs, known in police circles here as "Chaddidhari giroh", had also looted some truck drivers on the new by-pass road linking Raisen Road just outside the city limits.

Initiating the debate, Mr. Verma said: "When residents of the State capital do not feel safe, the people in other parts of the State have reasons to be worried about their security." There was a slight commotion at this juncture when the BJP MLA, Gauri Shankar Shejwar, intervened and said that the Government should ensure that such incidents do not occur in the State capital. The Minister of State for Home, Nagendra Singh responded to this by saying that all efforts were aimed towards ensuring that the State remains crime-free.

About the recent dacoity incidents, he said that the police had some important clues that would eventually lead to the arrest of the culprits. Mr. Singh said the State capital's population was rapidly increasing and hence the incidence of crime had also gone up.

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Walkout over dacoities in Bhopal

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