Siddu: Need better coordination to stop crime in south

Bengaluru, NT Bureau: Under the chairmanship of Karnataka Director General & Inspector General of Police, a one-day conference of all the DGPs of southern states as well as senior officers from central police organisations, was hosted on Wednesday at a convention centre of ITC Gardenia Bengaluru.

During the meeting, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said investigative agencies should be one step ahead of criminals and they must prioritise intelligence gathering, coordination, cooperation and targeted actions against terrorist organisations.

Siddaramaiah appreciated the police forces for their round-the-clock work and said the police should be proactive in preventing cyber crimes since cyber attacks have been increasing in various ways in the past few years and online cheating has become more common.

He said cybercrime not only harms an individual personally but it also poses grave danger to national security. The consequences of cyber attacks can be devastating causing financial losses, reputational damage and even endangering lives in some cases.

Noting that Karnataka was the first state in India to start a cyber crime police station in 2003, he said that it has CEN (Cyber Economic and Narcotics Crime) police stations in every district of the state to prevent cyber crime. He said that the police officers of the cyber station have received special training to handle such cases.

He said as law enforcers, they should not only be one step ahead of those who destroy the health of the society, but also should adapt quickly and adopt a new model.

Siddaramaiah appreciated the efforts of the Karnataka Police in drug control by busting international drug networks and nabbing drug peddlers and said although Naxal activities have been curbed in the state, more cooperation is needed between the states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu to curb this problem.

In the conference along with Home Minister G Parameshwara, DGPs of Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Union territories of Puducherry and Andaman and Nicobar, along with regional heads of various Central Police Organizations, deliberated on various issues and policing challenges including Narcotics, Cybercrime, Left wing extremism, De-radicalisation as well as the issue of illegal immigrants, Coastal security challenges, among other issues that have ramifications across the southern states and ways to have more effective and meaningful coordination to address all these challenges through mutual cooperation.