Focus on teamwork: Delhi Police chief to SHOs

New Delhi: Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana interacted with the 79 newly posted SHOs and motivated them to work as a team and focus on community participation for better results, officials said on Friday.

Of the 79 station house officers, 61 have been appointed to the post for the first time, they said.

Addressing the SHOs on Thursday, Asthana called upon them to engage positively with change management. "Work as a team, lead from the front and focus on community participation for better results," he said.

The commissioner also noted that PCR staff and vehicles have been merged with police stations to augment resource capabilities and so that the law and order and investigation wings can pay due attention to investigation functions and achieve the next level of operational efficiency, according to the officials.

Asthana has focused largely on major structural changes in the Delhi Police, in the hopes that the force can optimise its resources to tackle different law and order challenges - by making sure each police station is equipped with enough resources to both handle law and order and focus on building airtight investigations.

Moreover, the Commissioner has also started a routine interaction with members of the force, where officers can bring their grievances directly to him.

And in addition to that, in a major decisive step for the Delhi Police, Commissioner Asthana has also brought about the start of having women lead district police stations with Inspector Shivani Malik being posted as the Hauz Khas SHO, following with eight more women were directed to head district police stations in Delhi.

Delhi Police PRO Chinmoy Biswal said the women inspectors have been posted as SHOs in key field roles.

The nine women SHOs are Alpana Sharma, Poonam Pareek, Dominka Purty, Roshlin Punam Minz, Harjinder Kaur, Pratibha Sharma, Kamini Gupta, Shivani Malik, and Sapna Duggal — posted in police stations across various district jurisdictions, police said.

Significantly, before the appointment of Inspector Malik,

the Delhi Police across 15 district jurisdictions did not have a single woman SHO in any of the 178 police stations, as revealed first in a Millennium Post report in March this year. Following this, the Delhi Commission for Women had also written to the force asking for an explanation for this.