Controversy over police training

| 14 August 2001 21:50 IST

Over 25 year-old police training school at Marol in Mumbai has been thrown into controversy with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena (having no MLA in the state) clashing over harassment meted out to over 800 Goan trainees there.

Eye brows have been raised over treatment to the trainees as one Goan trainee has already succumbed to death due to malaria while 25 others were hospitalised due to fever, suspected to be falciparum malaria.

The state-level Shiv Sena branch has alleged that the school has no proper infrastructural facilities while Goan trainees are being treated in a most inhuman manner under the pretext of rigorous training.

After personally visiting the Marol training school yesterday, chief minister Manohar Parrikar however has denied all the allegations. The issue is being blown out of proportion for vested political interest, he alleges, hitting indirectly at Shiv Sena.

While preponing their Ganesh Chaturthi holiday by three days to facilitate their comeback to Goa, Parrikar however now plans to meet all the trainees in private here in Goa, to rule out any possibility of he being kept in darkness.

Following newspaper reports reaching here about death of one young village boy and others being hospitalised, local Sena leader Vishnu Wagh made startling allegations that the trainees were forced to clean gutters and unhygienic food was being served to them as a punishment for not satisfying the senior police officers.

The training school is equipped with only 50 toilets for over 1000 trainees, half of which are out of use due to clogging while remaining half are not being cleaned up on day-to-day basis. He also alleges that trainers are extorting money from the trainees, failing which they are being mentally harassed.

"I cannot get training discipline relaxed as our police force has to undergo rigorous training if they have to deal firmly with all kind of criminals", states Parrikar. He feels that the complaint has come from around 10 per cent graduate and post-graduate city-based trainees who are not used to hard work.

While claiming further that most of those who were hospitalised were suffering due to normal viral flu, Parrikar certifies the training camp as the best one with all kind of proper infrastructural facilities available there.

As Goans cannot do without fish for a long time, the chief minister however plans to send a Goan cook there while also planning to send one civilian officer every month to monitor the training process.

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