Newly-appointed Meghalaya Director General of Police (DGP) Idashisha Nongrang on Monday took charge of office and underscored her commitment towards maintaining law and order, prevention and detection of crimes, combating crimes against women among other key priorities.
The 1992 batch IPS officer, who belongs to the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, became the first woman DGP of Meghalaya after replacing Lajja R Bishnoi.
Addressing the media, Nongrang said, “I don’t think the female DGP is any criteria or qualification for being DGP…but as a female officer, as a woman, I feel very strongly that women have a very different perspective and I would try to use that perspective to ensure that women themselves feel much better and feel much safer and improve the accessibility, which I know there’s a lot of room for improvement on the accessibility of the police to the public.”
Spelling out her priorities, she said, “Basic policing that is maintaining law and order, prevention and detection of crimes and of course, we would be focusing on areas, which we feel the trends are much more disturbing.”
Asserting the need to relook into the approach toward dealing with crimes against women, Nongrang said, “Despite the efforts we have been making over the years, there has been no decline, there has been in fact an increase…we haven’t been able to have the kind of results that we have been hoping for. Therefore, I feel that we need to have a relook at how we will be going about it and may rethink and rework our approach towards tackling such issues.”
Stating that intelligence would also be a focused area for her, the new DGP said, “When it comes to intelligence, we always feel the lesser the better so I would not like to comment on how we go about collecting our intelligence but rest assured that intelligence is a focus area for us and without intelligence we will not really able to do our duties to the extent that we would like to.”
Terming the issue of drug menace as disturbing, Nongrang said Shillong was usually a transit point but now it has become a consumer and despite the seizures made police have not really been able to stop the actual supply system adding there have been commendable efforts by the anti-narcotic task force (ANTF) in number of cases but the “deterrent factor” is not there.
She asserted the need of the families to join the fight against drug menace. “It is something, which we need to work very closely not only with the law enforcement, the other agencies that are involved in the fight against drug but also specially with the families and the society at large, we would like to drill down to the families because one thing I have notice about us is we would like to talk about it but we don’t really do much about it and when it comes to my family it is okay no it is not to be discussed.”
On suggestion to stop the supply of drugs at the entry points to the state, the new DGP said, “That is only one of the aspects I would say as to how best to tackle the drug menace. Yes if we could get them at the entry point yes nothing like it but the fact of the matter we have a very porous and the national highway passes through Meghalaya so there are limitations on the amount of checking you can do and drugs is something which is so easy to concealed so unless there is specific information, you could be checking the right vehicle but unless we know where to look it is very difficult.”
Asked on the illegal coal mining, Nongrang said there have been numerous instructions from the government and there are instructions from the court while the police has been trying to control it.
“(But) here also it is a question of a large number of people in the society, the question of livelihood, so how best we balance the livelihood issue and the illegal part of it,” she said
In regards to the decision of the proscribed Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) to pull out of the peace talks, the DGP said, “Where the peace talks are concerned, it is a decision where the government has made very clear that they are very open to peace talks as the DGP of the state yes, we have seen HNLC we have faced them, yes, we have also seen peace talks with the ANVC, which ended in a tripartite agreement. We have also seen the problems of implementing that agreement. We have also dealt with GNLA and we did have any kind of peace talks with the GNLA and a number of other small groups – so where HNLC is concerned and peace talks are concerned, I think the right person to talk to would be the government in this case.”
On the alleged demand notes by the Khasi rebel outfit, Nongrang said, “On that, the demand notes of the HNLC, the HNLC themselves have come up with clarification that it is not them, that verification is going on whether it is actually them or an offshoot of somebody mimicking the HNLC. Investigation is going on, inquiries are going and I would like to leave it at that.”
She also emphasized that bringing misguided youth to the right path is not just the duty of the police.
“…police have to work together with society and other concerned groups and it should be a concerted effort and should be looking at having a synergy in ensuring that the youth are not misguided,” she added.
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