Recognizing its feat for leading from the front in Odisha’s fight against drug trafficking, the Odisha government has approved the proposal for the strengthening of manpower of Special Task Force (STF), the specialized investigation wing of the State police.
“Odisha Police has been taking concerted action against drug trafficking for quite some time. STF is in vanguard of such action and leading the fight against drug trafficking for Odisha Police”, the director General of Police, Abhay said.
Keeping in mind the excellent job being done by STF in recent years, we had sent a proposal for the strengthening of STF cadres. Accordingly the government has approved the proposal in this regard, he said.
As many as 27 new posts for STF including one in the rank of superintendent of police and three in the rank of deputy superintendent of police have been approved by the State government. Besides, the government has also approved our proposal to create a new unit in the STF to exclusively deal with drug trafficking headed by a SP rank officer. Therefore, the STF will now have two units headed by one SP each, one STF (Narcotics Unit) and another STF (Organized Crime Unit), he said.
“We thank the Government for the creation of posts, creation of a new unit and their continuous support and guidance to STF. We assure the Government and people of Odisha that STF will continue to excel and reach greater heights in combating drug trafficking and organized crime”, DGP Abhay added.
In the past two years, the STF has successfully launched a series of crackdowns on drug peddlers and achieved record-shattering haul of narcotic drugs including brown sugar. Credit of it goes to the orchestrated team endeavour of the specialized investigating agency. Besides, it has performed admirably in intercepting wildlife offences, organized crimes, smuggling of ores and precious stones, said top police officials.