Post-Malkangiri, more incentives for cops fighting Maoists

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who visited Malkangiri last Sunday, commiserated with the families of the deceased policemen, meeting the mother and wife of Inspector Sarat Chandra Mishra, one of the policemen killed in the blast.

Before the Malkangiri blast, families of Orissa cops who died while fighting Maoists were compensated with Rs 4 lakh ex gratia, Rs 10 lakh as insurance money and a job or a special family pension amounting to the expected pay of the policeman till his superannuation. “If somebody from the family of the deceased policeman opted for a government job according to his/her qualifications, then the family didn’t get the special family pension. But after the Malkangiri blast, the families of the deceased policemen would get both as well as a homestead land measuring four decimal,” said a senior official of the state’s Home Department.

“It will be a morale booster for other policemen engaged in fighting the Maoists,” said Deputy Inspector General of Police (southwest range) Sanjib Panda. The families getting special family pensions will get the routine increments that would have been due to the deceased policeman in normal time, and the pay scale will be revised when the state Government revises the pay of its officials.

Sources said the CM was moved after he was told that the Inspector took a personal interest in training the cops in jungle warfare. He was due to be transferred to the Special Operations Group, the anti-Maoist specialised police unit with headquarters in Bhubaneswar, as assistant commandant three months ago. He could not leave as his replacement had not arrived.

After the July 16 landmine blast, the CM promised a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Maoists. Senior police and Home Department officials, however, admitted that it would take a long time to effectively resist the rebels in the state.

Senior police officials said the state Government has announced a 15 per cent increase in pay for policemen posted in Maoist areas, but they admitted that such measures were not going fix the problem of large-scale vacancies. “For the last seven years, we did not do any recruitment, and suddenly we want to fill the 12,000 vacancies in the ranks of constable, havildar and sepoy. Recruitment alone is not enough, the cops need to be trained in jungle warfare as well,” said a Home Department official. “Till now, the Orissa police were like fishermen who caught small fishes. For them the Maoists are like whales. They are too overwhelmed and outsmarted by the rebels to counter them,” added the official.

There is also a crisis brewing at the highest ranks as there are barely 98 IPS officers in a state with a sanctioned strength of 159 officers. In February 2008, the CM had boasted that 98 police stations and 20 armouries had been fortified in the state and fortification of the rest would be completed soon. But with 465 police stations in Orissa, no one is sure how many years it would take to complete the fortification process.