Assam police to get Special Highway Patrol unit

GUWAHATI: Assam government has decided to set up a special Highway Patrol unit of the Assam Police to deal with accidents and crimes on National Highways, an official release said here today.

The decision was taken at a law and order review meeting convened by Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi with Assam DGP Khagen Sarma and other senior police officials last night.

"In view of the rising accident related cases, the meeting decided to create a special Police Highway Patrol to deal with emergency accident cases as well as crimes on the National Highways," the statement said.

Sarma informed the meeting that the accident prone areas have been identified and highway patrolling would be focused on these areas.

The meeting also discussed about the time limit for disposal of verification cases by police across the state.

"An action plan has been chalked out to bring down the number of verification cases in all the districts by August 15 this year," it said.

Almost one lakh verification cases are received by the police annually in the state and Sarma said the process is on to bring down the cases of verification in some districts of the state.

"The Chief Minister asked the senior police officials to initiate measures to clear the huge backlog of cases in the different police stations across the state to a reasonable level within the next six months," the release said.