Indian police is providing training to the villagers for securing the India-Pakistan border. At least 74 young men and women, is working hard to become a “special police officer” to assist law enforcement officers in dozens of mountain villages in the frontier district of Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir.
These young trainees are being trained from dawn to dusk for nearly three months. They are receiving physical training, followed by classes on border management and on collaborating with police and border guards in the event of skirmishes along the frontier between India and Pakistan. Also, they receive training in weapon handling and law and order.
Special police officers are mainly recruited for intelligence gathering and counter-insurgency operations. But in recent years, the lower-ranked officers have assisted in border areas as well because of local recruits’ familiarity with the topography and ability to assist police and border guards during emergencies.
“We have recruited this batch exclusively for border management,” said Ramesh Kotwal, the police chief of Kathua. “We are training them to be more specialised in dealing with issues like cross-border shelling.”
“The recruits are in the final stage of their training and will be sent to remote police border posts in Kathua”, he further added.
The volatile frontier between India and Pakistan has been silent since February, when the two nuclear-armed nations reaffirmed a 2003 ceasefire accord. Before that, troops on the two sides regularly exchanged artillery, rockets and small arms fire, killing hundreds since the ceasefire was originally signed.
Source: AP
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