Kochi: In a novel initiative, the Government Railway Police (GRP) has started What’s App groups like ‘GRP Kerala’and ‘Rail Alert’ to track absconding serial offenders.
“The groups have Intelligence Officers and police personnel from across Thiruvananthapuram division, belonging to GRP and RPF (Railway Protection Force) and even those from neighbouring Palakkad and Chennai divisions as members. Upon finding persons under suspicious circumstances in stations and onboard trains, the mobile police personnel formed for the purpose would upload their pictures. The officers across divisions could check on crime files and find out whether they have any pending charges or is a serial offender on a real time basis,” said DySP (Ernakulam region), R Rajesh.
For this, the railway police has sought the help of Travelling Ticket Examiners and other rail staff to report on persons found under suspicious circumstances.
The initiative, launched as part of the two-month long ‘Operation Monsoon’, has already turned out to be effective as the cops have succeeded in nabbing 10 criminals with pending warrants against them, in the space of just two weeks.
The cops are also in the process of preparing a list of serial offenders in the last ten years and are closely monitoring for their presence in their “strike areas”. “We are also tracing the mobile numbers of serial offenders to keep a close watch on their activities.”
Ever since Operation Monsoon was launched on July 1, not even a single case of baggage theft on board trains was reported in the division.
“Usually such cases are reported on every third day on an average,” the officer said.
